The Border Between
by melissaisdown
Summary: Meaning, motherhood, memory and the thin line separating the loss of it all. House/Cuddy
1. Life Before Lisa Cuddy

_**paternity (vol i)**_

**I. Life Before Lisa Cuddy**

Time passes in moments.

Minutes, days, weeks–––the years pass without a purpose until the day it's discovered.

The day of this discovery can be a dismal and discouraging accident, the moment itself might be comprised of decades or as instantaneous as the blink of an eye. The day can be memorable, bathing hope and promise in the light of an advent, an awakening. The day can be indifferent, an arbitrary acknowledgment of all things taken for granted. The only certainty is that one day the sum of wasted time will make itself seen.

For Greg House it was visible in the vulnerable, broken expression of a best friend.

Her eyes welling with tears were emeralds, bloodshot red, sapphires when she's happy, lonely, azure every other time, that night they were different.

Jade or viridian, he wanted to bring the blue back.

The kiss was about more than color or compassion. Affection melted with emotion and together they negated the bleak with the beautiful.

Mournful eyes faded to phantoms as he said goodnight. When the door shut there was still a little bit of her taste in his mouth and he let it linger. The flavor of the fleeting, perfect confession, of what they were both feeling, what they'd felt for so long, he savored. It was an ending.

It was only the beginning.

-

House is home now, confronting the conundrum, remembering the details of a long buried past, uncertain why the details he'd most like to forget are the most obstinately vivid.

He's alone. That much hasn't changed, not yet. On his couch he's lying with a headache, trying to forget about everything, trying to focus on the pain of his leg rather than the pain he's suppressed in his soul for decades.

He rubs his thigh, squinting imperceptibly when, for an instant, it feels as if the hollow of missing muscle is shallower, like a rippled indent, just a scar and not the gaping rift, the vacancy, the need and handicap it actually is.

Everything at once rushes forth in an attempt to not think of anything at all. Even the pain and awareness dissolve into memory. The struggle of the last weeks is close but overwhelmed tonight by the struggle of every day before.

-

Life is not linear. It's fragmented and unforgiving. A beginning does not necessarily begin and an ending does not necessarily end anything. There are no transitions between joy and sorrow. The chasm between pain and peace can be narrow or infinite. Love and hate, confusion and comprehension, desire and desperation, there is a thin line between every opposite and it is an impossible irony in life that opposites attract.

Conception is a beginning before a beginning, birth a first breath. What follows seems sequential: colicky and crawling, chalkboards and recess and classroom crushes, pimples, puberty, commencement and college.

Youth.

People learn and grow, move and change, live and die. There's hope and hindsight and life in between.

But memory shatters the illusion of experience as a straight line. What's remembered and forgotten are the moments that define an identity, justify an existence, make the minutes, days and years worth while. The earliest memories fade out, until the beginnings blur into the endings and there's no clear chronology, until the fear of forgetting yesterday, all yesterdays that were once tomorrows, is all that's left and the struggle to remember everything is the same as the search for self, for truth, for the meaning of it all.

_**birth to birthmark**_

Gregory House was born in a white sterile delivery room in Columbus General on the 11th of June a decade before man set foot on the moon.

Head first, he came into the world, eyes wide open and a sincere expression of disbelief filling his face, with his tiny mouth gaping but no sound escaping. A doubtful blink preceded the sting of a hand smacking him hard and the newborn's voice was heard. Weeping, he was alive, punished and in pain before even being held by those responsible for his existence.

Dawn broke, with sunlight sifting through hospital windows and freckling shadows intensifying the rigor of the bath of light. It was the beginning of a beautiful day to be born. Fast asleep, the baby boy looked at the doctors and parents before heavy lids fell shut, almost aware of the possibility that he could one day be both.

From his mother, he inherited every trait except the stray inexpressible few that developed prior to the paternal antipathy that would only subside after his father's death. John's influence was neither natural nor nurturing but more an aggressive and extraneous exercise in discipline. From his son's first steps there was a refusal to accept the subordinate, his son was the best, he would be the best. He'd make him work for it and settle for nothing less.

House inherited only one incessant attribute from his father, his name.

-

Childhood is a time of promises.

The promise of a future feels like a guarantee. The promise of two parents, bound and determined to see that their child succeeds seems requisite. The promise of play, of laughter and smiling and seeing the world in a way only a child can, is natural and necessary.

But for many, the timeline of youth is comprised only of broken promises. And childhood consists of disappointment and defeat, the saddest era in existence, because nobody can fathom the opposites of childhood and misery coexisting.

From the words that his wife was pregnant, John had expectations and hopes for his son, the assigned aspirations that every parent possesses and that every child will withstand and revolt against.

Religion was the first thing forced upon the boy. Baptism through his first communion, the occasional need to confess his sins inside a dusty pine chamber, midnight mass and turkey at his aunt's every Christmas–––Lent without reubens, Sunday mornings and spring afternoons staring at an alter where piety preached and stupidity wed––– he suffered through it all with few complaints. But absolution, he knew, was no solution.

Initially, it wasn't the unsubstantiated concept of belief that bothered him. There has always been a counterbalance of doubt to trust in his mind but in his heart, the boy marveled at the concept of faith. No, it was his father's hypocrisy that turned House against religion.

A man who waged wars, who sinned and called it sacred.

Other than instilling the fear of God, John's greatest effort focused on his son following in his own footsteps, unerringly. Growing up immersed in the military environment gave Greg an advantage and his father hoped he would become a marine, a commissioned officer or a warrant officer, something more than the enlisted eighteen year old he had been.

House's rebellious spirit resisted, even before he knew why, he had no desire to be like his father. Patriarchal adoration and the inherent inclination for imitation had skipped a generation. Worse, when he saw his father's fallen comrades, not the graves or memorials, but the shell shocked and the amputees, he was repulsed and had no intention of sacrificing an arm or a leg to serve his country.

Avoiding combat would in no way reduce the odds of him one day facing amputation and beneath the paternal pressure to be perfect, an individual existed and neither father nor son ever considered the possibility of that individual developing into a lonely, misanthropic drug addict.

-

There was a persistent impermanence to every aspect of his passing youth. One factor that brought about an early extinction to moments of happiness that most children experience was chronic transience. The House's were a Marine family, with a commandant husband, a warbride wife, and a lonely mobile military brat––––a picture of American pride. And constantly moving.

Destinations were random and unpredictable. Through the years, House found the temporary state of 'home' exciting. Everything was new and change kept life from becoming boring. After some initial resistance upon entering kindergarten, he'd return to this perspective and accept his inability to stay in one place.

Ohio was where he hit the ground running but soon they were in West Germany, Egypt, Hong Kong, California and then farther pacific to Japan. He learned the language as he was submerged into each new culture, with no choice but to adapt or die trying.

An innocent laugh accentuated by round dimples on the rare occasion of an unexpected smile and an evanescent almost incandescent halo that backlit the boy when the sun was shining, were the highlights of his youth's self. He was most often seen with a dirty face, stained clothes and tangled hair––– blonde, then auburn at the roots before it grew to be brown. Or gray.

When he was five he was sent to school, where he initiated into the art of pasting green paper on orange paper, weaving colored necklaces and manufacturing eternal handprints. He learned shapes and letters and sharing and took his dad's medals in for show and tell without permission. He was inclined to drowse off to sleep in the middle of less engaging tasks, like the morning recitation of the pledge of allegiance, a habit which irritated both his parents and teachers.

No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, enthusiastic expression was crossed with just a hint of sadness but even before he grew into his brooding snare and condescension, he had the inclination to alienate those around him. And aggravate those who remained.

From St. Sebastian's to St. Regis', parochial school was where his miseducation commenced. His classmates found that playing with little strips of construction paper, eating glue and daubing their fingers in color to paint peculiar and bright designs, were the most fascinating games in the world. House mocked them for being so easily amused. Complacency was a word he had yet to learn but the boy knew he was bored. Prone to throwing tantrums in the absence of a challenge, he was often bad enough to be forced to stand in the corner or be spanked—then he cried—but there were still lazy hours in the rainbow room that had a crucifix on every wall and skylight shining through windows while Sister Bailey's kind hand rested for a moment now and then in his tousled hair.

The days flowed on in a monotonous blur.

At night, wherever home was, after the books made him sleepy, he had a tiny turntable and would play 45s–––children's songs he'd soon trade for rhythm and blues and blasphemous rock and roll. The desire to be a musician enticed him, he saw the potential for music to be liberation, escape and expression.

Sometimes he'd fall asleep watching a movie. A super-8 projector was always on his dresser and a white bedsheet easily hung on the wall. He liked loading the projector, the tactility of cellulose triacetate, of holding the film and frames.

For a while he wanted to be a director or photographer and has always preferred the soft glow of a fading and scratched reel over the pale flicker of a cathode ray tube. He was capable of being creative and would splice together home movies and cartoons, solaced by the illusion of control, by manipulating the teleology of his childhood reality.

The lens of the projector was quickly replaced by the convex and concave elements of a telescope, a split reel by the slide of microscope.

(There are still days when his soul aches with a permanent nostalgia for that tangibility, for that feeling that he could edit the sad parts, direct his own fate, that forever wasn't impossible).

For a time when nothing was impossible ––––

Always, after he was in bed a long time, there were voices–––indefinite and fading, infinitely sorrowful and just outside his window. As he fell asleep he would drown the voices in one of his favorite dreams, the one about becoming a great athlete and winning countless gold trophies or becoming an astronaut and testing the limits of the universe. It was always the becoming he dreamed of and never the being. This characteristic was and still is at the heart of his unhappiness.

As an only child, Greg spent many hours alone. It wasn't that he was friendless, he socialized with ease and had an intercontinental ensemble of buddies. But at the end of the day, after school and sports, tree climbing and limb breaking, he was all by himself.

Encouraged to play sports, he swam first because the ocean was in his backyard and because he wanted to surf and sail and on some days drown. Eventually he'd row and became a decent oarsman but broke his scapula soon after and the azure infinity, crashing in waves, narrowed quickly.

There was still chess and science and music and the exploration of the always new geography under his feet. He was mocked for his last name (but usually armed with a much harsher, poignant retort) and almost never called by his first except for an exasperated '_Gregory_' when he made trouble.

He was bullied in places where his difference was unacceptable, though it rarely bothered him. There were a few fist fights and a number of schoolyard duels but he was more passive aggressive than forcefully violent. Blessed with an unusual existential resilience, his confidence always returned and his self assurance never tapered.

Deemed 'gifted' in grade school, he was already being separated from the average and the normal. The sixties came to pass and he spent most of the time reading. House found Holmes early. There was '_A Scandal in Bohemia,_' and '_The Hound of Baskervilles'_ had its pages falling away from the binding as he turned them. '_The Lost World'_ was another favorite and anthropology a subject of interest. But dinosaurs were closer to history than science so the paleontology phase faded. Conan Doyle had been friends with Houdini and magic quickly consumed the next stage of his curiosity. A conceptual system that asserts man's ability to control the natural world through mystical, paranormal or supernatural means was absurd, he knew, even at eight years old. But it was interesting and unorthodox and an alternative to the quantitative burden of his primary education.

People began to fascinate him, their flaws and anomalies. He was keenly observant of all those around him and knew when his best friend Will was hiding scars from his stepfather's abuse, when his English teacher was going through a difficult divorce and when Elizabeth Rutherford, a girl he had a crush on in the fourth grade, started her period.

Everything occurred for a reason and 'why' was his most favorite word. Every effect had a cause, every question an answer. House never kept a journal but sometimes felt compelled to write. He often carried with him a notebook full of observations and insights about human behavior and habits. It was never speculation, he always knew he was right.

His heroes weren't the drafted and dying troops overseas, or the vets who survived nor were they his parents, any comic book or otherwise fictional characters. He had no real heroes except, on rare occasions, himself.

House didn't understand why heroism was defined as risking life for war and charging toward death, all death was certain. Accelerating this inevitability was just stupid. He knew he'd only live once and even if he never truly appreciated his life, he tried not to waste it.

_**aside:mother**_

In 1967 Blythe got in a car, a combination of black ice and running a red light, she survived. The event made House realize how random life could be, how death depends on chance more than destiny. His first reaction was a somewhat self-centered one, he panicked. Realizing how close he'd come to loss and how easily he could be broken by tragedy, he didn't cry. He brooded in the ER waiting room about what he would do if he lost his mother. It would just be him and John, he'd have no freedom, no parents because his father's a marine pilot, flying high and killing communists. House would be an orphan.

Perhaps he already was one, waiting, not knowing the outcome of the unforeseen disaster.

During Blythe's stay at the hospital, her son rose hell. A near-loss is a momentary anxiety and the weight of what _could_ have happened was lifted as soon as he heard her voice. So House spent the days switching charts, mummifying himself in surgical tape, stealing lollipops from pediatrics and popping balloons in other patient's rooms.

After she returned home, House nursed his mother back to health. He concocted elixirs consisting of Coca Cola, Mylanta, ice cream, aspirin and antibiotics, a panacea of sorts. He examined her arm, changed her butterfly stitches and made sure she got bed rest, bringing her bowls of cereal in the morning and bowls of soup for dinner.

The dynamic of their relationship changed, he almost appreciated her. She was infallible in a way, invincible when she tried. Years later, when he'd suspect and believe and prove that John wasn't his father, he still couldn't hate Blythe. She held the secret of his identity, she was a part of him, she was his mother. It was the first and, sometimes, only truth he knew.

- - - - - -

Punctuality was his prison and time a constraint. If House was even five minutes late, he didn't eat dinner. On days he knew he'd be late, because of the bus or practice, or any of the things that make kids careless about time, Blythe made him and extra large lunch. But the boy was always thin, always reaching over and helping himself to his cafeteria mates' meals.

A patient prisoner, he developed his own philosophy of time, a sort of eternalism that demoted punctuality to the formality and conformity he already disdained.

Through chronic tardiness, a complete disregard for schedules and ignoring time completely, knowing it would pass soon enough, House wandered and grew. The past was immutably fixed, the future undefined and nebulous and his casual often contemptuous approach to time, tethered to his incapability of admitting any viewpoint but his own and resisting or defying all discipline, would come to characterize his career and his adulthood, year after year.

From ten to twelve he was enrolled in military school. Or schools, to be more accurate. He was resentful against all those in authority over him and this, combined with a contemptuous indifference toward his country and his work left him ostracized and exhausted from reps and laps and punishments at school, bruised and broken from domestic abuse at home for not becoming, in any respect, his father's son. The image of himself as a sort of pariah was born but he never envied conformists. He was beginning to see who he was and already knew who he wasn't.

House grew discouraged and eventually, after a few expulsions and establishing an ineradicable infamy, had no choice but to join the ranks of the ordinary in a public junior high.

(There were moments of abysmal introspection when he realized he wasn't like anybody around him; that, even if he had the will to, he could and would never be like everybody else.

He wasn't liked or loved, praised or popular. He knew he'd never be the touchdown scoring quarterback with a squad of pretty girls cheering for him. He had his books and his bicycle and the everpresent knowledge that this, and now, are fleeting and and forgettable and that there is no such thing as forever).

_**aside: alone**_

Algebra was easy and science second nature but his intellect remained marred by mischief. Born with a rather puritan conscience (not that he yielded to it), the struggle was to shed his scruples. Later in life he'd all but slew them completely. As he approached adolescence though, he considered himself much worse than other boys.

But his antics were hardly halted by guilt. Sarcasm, the desire to influence people in almost every way (manipulative, and 'bastard' would come soon), a certain coldness and lack of affection, amounting sometimes to cruelty, a shifting sense of honor and shame, an unholy selfishness and a puzzled, furtive, growing interest in everything concerning sex plagued his personality.

For the last feature, time spent alone meant, more than anything, an early introduction to the miracle of masturbation. When he awoke from his first wet dream, with sweaty tendrils and sticky beneath the sheets, he wasn't appalled or confounded, he was interested, he was curious. Already in his possession were more than a few biology books. The texts answered most questions and his amorous schoolmates elaborated on the rest.

There was a strange mythology surrounding the act. The Greeks credited the god Hermes with its invention: he allegedly took pity on his son Pan, who was pining for Echo but unable to seduce her, and taught him the trick of masturbation in order to relieve his suffering. Pan in his turn taught the habit to young shepherds.

In ancient Egypt the god Atum was believed to have created the universe by masturbating, with the ebb and flow of the Nile attributed to the frequency of his ejaculations. Pharaohs, because of this, were at one time required to masturbate ceremonially into the Nile.

He laughed when they moved to Cairo.

The girls at school were driving him mad. He'd gotten used to a cleavage free environment between fifth and seventh grade and now the perfume and the dresses, the legs under those dresses and the thighs at the top of those legs, it was all too much.

Ogling or examining, sometimes it was a gaze unnoticed, by a girl who stole his senses, sometimes an inexperienced teacher, but usually a girl. Close but impossible, she would always be.

It started in the shower. It was a place of privacy, a locked door and infrequent intrusion. He'd conceal his lust by holding books in front of himself during the day at school, the arousal would wane at practice but when he came home it returned, raging and ready. The downpour was scolding as the steamed filled his lungs and it was just tug and pull and jerk and then down the drain.

Some nights once wasn't enough, or he'd showered in the locker room and would have more than heat and water around him. There was his body, solid, striving to be strong in the mirror. House would stare as he stroked, more contemplative than most. He liked the way he looked. The arms, the chest, the hamstrings all had room for improvement. But the muscle in his hand he was happy with. He was beautiful and he knew it.

He had become Narcissus rather than Atum.

The mirror also let him scrutinize more closely the distance and trajectory. He was always measuring. Everything was quantifiable, even his own self gratification.

Soon he'd find his uncle's Playboys and take more than a few. Porn was more easily attained than the courage to approach a girl. He knew he wouldn't go blind or grow hair on his palms but he also knew that the release that resembled happiness was no cure for loneliness.

There was none of the compulsory guilt, no shame or doubt that what feels good is good. He'd eventually venture outside the bounds of the bedroom or bath. When he was in the middle of a long boring lecture he'd excuse himself, saunter casually to the lavatory and after ten or fifteen savage strokes spill with a hiss into the urinal. He'd never outgrow that compulsion completely and sometimes still, while making a clinic patient wait, wanders to the bathroom, wondering if Wilson will be there.

Doubled over his flying fist with his mouth wide open and his eyes pressed shut, the solo endeavor on long days made being alone almost tolerable. It still does.

Wistful about wanking, there were ideas in his head about girls, about sex being more than sperm and syphilis and unexpected pregnancy. Few females were present in his life and as of yet he was still antisocial with that other gender, so he had fantasies. Some were graphic and obscene, with him pounding hard into every orifice as he was goaded on by the red headed girl on the corner of the street, whose name he made sure never to learn, lest it taint the sweet sticky unreality of it all.

Some were oedipal, residual moments of comfort from his recent childhood.

Most were reflective, hopeful but not optimistic. They were scenarios between he and a girl with a name. There were words between them and motions. He tried to imagine touching her breast, the color of her nipples, the pink he'd slip into, slowly, an attempt at tenderness.

He'd lunge into his grip in a dark room, bucking smooth, rubbing and pumping and pulling the skin over the rim of his glans.

Then a female filled his mind who had no name, no face. She was beautiful, she was truth somehow and he concentrated on every detail of this ideal lover, everything he wanted, more than he expected. He would come panting, swept up in the perfection of anonymity. This person could exist, she could be as real as the puddle on his stomach and more constant than the cramp in his wrist.

Reality recurred soon though, with the chemicals of instant and easy euphoria swimming away and somber equilibrium flowing through his bloodstream again.

Hoping that in the next few years he'd discover a world of more than crusted socks and crumpled kleenex, he tried to deny but always suspected that there was something inherently unlikable about himself. He embraced rather than resisted it but in the half waking awareness he knew that even if he could stay in one place long enough, nobody would ever love the awkward gaping genius. Here, he first considered the possibility that he might not let them, even if they tried.

- - - -

It was 1971 and around three o'clock on the fourth of July when Greg House was stranded at a gathering of soldiers and soldiers' wives who were gallantly exercising their carnivorous natures and sweating profusely in uniforms and sundresses. Some might call it a barbecue but being the youngest person there, House likened it more to purgatory. The sky was overcast, as hopeless as an escape and the patriotic celebration suffered from geographical irony, they weren't even in America.

Bored, he began speculating: who was related to who, who was most likely to have a heat stroke, who was eating what and why. He'd deduced that the parfaits had curdled, the punch was spiked and a certain lieutenant was dating his cousin.

A pretty girl about twice his age stood at a distance and a glimpse became an examination, the examination anatomical adoration until he was ogling certain parts of her and ignoring the rest. The red white and blue tank top she was wearing was a vehicle of destruction, no, a weapon, with two grenades...

The metaphor was interrupted when the incestuous lieutenant stepped into his field of view and blocked the only thing he liked about his country of origin. House was about to move, maybe even approach the girl (with a beer in his hand, he knew he looked older than he was) when the lieutenant stepped aside and another man sat where he was standing. When he could see again, the girl had disappeared and after a moments of scanning the gray and green and scorching landscape, he saw she was attempting to swallow the tongue of some young marine in the shade.

The discovery was tinged with dejection and House looked down, expecting to see his feet and usually comforted by the sight of sneakers, this time he saw only the auburn balding scalp of an officer he didn't recognize. The man was his father's age and rank, in an unfamiliar uniform, a comrade perhaps, a friend of the family maybe, though he hadn't remembered ever seeing him before.

Skylight reflected off the stranger's scalp, glaring gray and as House looked closer, the reflection became a revelation. Beneath the bright white there was red. It was a small strawberry shaped birthmark flooded in sweat; a birthmark identical in size, shape and location to his own. Coincidence was his first thought. Then he thought maybe the man was an uncle, some relative he'd never met. Surely there was a connection. He investigated and learned only that they weren't related.

Then House asked his father, feigning historical interest, where he was stationed in October 1958. John admitted that he was deployed to Okinawa for training exercises at the beginning of September and continued with a long detailed account of the heroism he witnessed in Korea, the carnage and loss and how it was all necessary and rewarding.

John took pride in taking lives. Perhaps, ultimately in an effort to be the opposite of him, House pursued medicine to take pride in _saving_ lives. Not necessarily for the benefit of humanity but to negate his father's work.

Between the birthmark discovery and chronological confirmation about his own conception, House scrutinized and compared his father and himself. He was searching for evidence, for physical proof of what he knew was true.

What information he could gather about inherited traits was vague and elementary. He had dimples, but so did Blythe. He had a hitchhiker's thumb, but so did John. Neither parent had detached ears. Then there were his toes. House's second toe was not bigger than the rest, John's was. Of course, House's feet were still growing.

There were acquired traits as well. He considered his high tolerance for pain an acquired trait, the need to crack his knuckles and his taste for whiskey he also blamed on John but in all other ways he refused to be anything like this person pretending to be a patriarch.

The war waged on against the man who was no one to him. House was stuck in the middle, watching two people who didn't love each other and probably never have, stay together for the kid or because it was convenient or because they were afraid of change.

Worse than divorce, their animosity was natural, infidelity reality. He felt repulsed and vindicated in the same instant. It was a confirmation to something he never realized he'd suspected. It was the first puzzle that would alter his life, its solution a confrontation of his own creation.

If House was conceived from an extramarital affair, not unconditional love, or romantic love or any kind of love, but lust–– an adulterous tryst––– he was an accident. Or his mother married the wrong man. Either way, he was a bastard.

Both of his parents were liars.

A philosophy was born.

Love was an invention, romance was an illusion and his life was a lie. Though his own self perception was shattered the instant he saw the sweat soaked strawberry, he took it in stride. House was no more affected than a child who grows to a certain age and realizes Santa Claus (and God, in his case) isn't real. Fidelity was a myth people made to placate conformity and keep their conscience in check.

His identity had been redefined or negated, it was in jeopardy the entire time. He felt particularly betrayed because of this. Not only had he lost any aspiring sense of who he was, or wanted to be, but the answer was beyond his grasp. He could never approach the friend of the family in which he belonged, he could never ask the stranger the question or seek proof. His resentment escalated because of this limitation, this perpetually unanswerable question, more than the secret itself.

'Semper fi,' he'd think as a civilian in a crowd of marines at every formal and familial gathering his biological father attended––– but, everybody lies.

At the end of July and in the middle of the night a parched insomniac twelve year old House wandered downstairs for a drink of water. The journey to the kitchen had been perfectly quiet and he surprised himself by grabbing a glass and a handful of ice, in a dark house whose floorplan and furniture placement he had yet to memorize, so silently. When the freezer door shut a magnet fell. The porcelain, or enamel, or whatever it was made of shattered and broke the silence. His father was standing at attention before he could even assess the damage. House picked up the pieces and threw them in the trash, turning away with the water in his hand and without saying a word.

The trash can was full, with the stellate remains of the ceramic souvenir near the edge, threatening to drop and divide into even smaller fragments. In a demanding but drowsy voice, John told Greg to take the trash out. House rubbed his eyes, the corners scratching with sand and said, "No. It's three in the morning." He'd been scolded many times for his refusal of responsibility, smacks and punches and slander, but developed an endurance for it and knew the limits of his parent's intolerance. It was the middle of the night, John was whispering, he thought his spousal respect to not wake Blythe would deter the abuse until morning. This time though, he underestimated the effect on his father of the sight of him walking away.

"Now," John reiterated, grinding his teeth. "Listen to me, boy."

House turned his head, a lanky leaning specter except for his mouth, a highlighted half moon of scorn. He didn't consider the consequences, only the truth:

"Why? You're not my father."

John uttered a strange husky sound and sprang for him. House dodged to the side, tipped a chair and tried to get past the table. He sighed sharply when a hand grasped his shoulder and felt the dull impact of a fist against the side of his head and glancing blows on the upper part of his body. As he slipped in John's grasp,

dragged or lifted when he clung to an arm, aware of every pang and strain, House made no sound except to laugh hysterically a few times. After a lull during which he was tightly held and they trembled together, murmuring truncated words, his father half dragged, half threatened his son upstairs.

During the agonizing ascent House spoke, whispering in a broken voice a memorized recitation of all the evidence that John was not his father. The soldier restrained himself, slapping his teenage son one last time before shoving him into his bedroom. With the paternal push their eyes connected and his father saw the honesty in Greg's eyes and knew in his heart that he was telling the truth.

For a long time House stood by the door. Listening as his dad locked him in, he was cold and bruised, his head hurt and there was a long shallow scratch on his neck from his father's fingernail. He sobbed harder the more he tried to stifle tears and all of the emotions he knew he shouldn't be feeling. It wasn't his father beating him, it was a stranger. He wished he could prove it. He wished 'father' was more than a title, more than a designation. It should be a person and a presence and in the absence of that presence, he desperately wished the pain was different. But the same it remained, regardless of identity or paternity, pain has been the only constant in his life.

It wasn't until he crawled into bed that he realized his nose was bleeding. A few fingers dabbed at nostrils when he felt the slow trickle and saw his blood black in the unlit room.

Rather than instill self pity or rouse the rational desire for revenge, House was almost consoled by the sight of his blood. He pushed a stack of paperback Conan Doyles from his bed, reached for a flashlight and picked up an anatomy textbook, determined to learn everything he didn't already know about the cause of nose bleeds (trauma, he thought, _obviously_) and the science of sinuses.

Early in the morning he fell asleep with his head on the book, one last drop of blood poetically staining the page, a tangible seal on his fate.

After that night, reason became his religion and objectivity replaced emotion. His heart hardened until the beat of it became muffled reverb, buried beneath a callous.

He'd grow and change and always deny that his obsession with mysteries and medicine was owed to his father (since 'father ' is only a word, a role at best, he still uses it to describe John). But his cynicism and doubt and success _are_ a result of the fractured fable he was born into, the abuse, of everything he suffered and especially the man he murdered with honesty and objectivity, with the distance he put between them and the genius that would be his greatness.

They didn't speak for two months, summer had ended with patricide dismissed but not forgotten. The war never ended because neither could surrender. House's arrogance advanced, a sense of superiority and his rancor matured, growing like a tumor between illegitimate father and son, after every beating.

John found that physical abuse wasn't enough anymore and the ice baths came, the nights of sleeping in the yard, waking in fog or frost, the imprint of his body like a chalk outline in the damp grass, a neighbor's dog snarling nose to nose with him and teachers asking why he was late for class.

Through and after the revelation, it was a great stage for Greg. Paternity would come to be a cradle for many emotional crises. It spurned his disobedience by logically justifying defiance of his dad and it complemented his curiosity. As an adult, his cynicism would spread (patients never disproved his distrust and his best friend would be a lecherous oncologist) but this event remains the catalyst for his disposition and his disbelief.

_**sarah's serenade**_

Puberty presented a new dilemma: the ineloquent introduction of the opposite sex. There were other obstacles as well. His body was changing and not just in the cliché educational explanation about erections way. He grew six inches almost overnight. A few facial hairs made their first appearance below his nostrils and along the crease of his chin. House shaved unnecessarily and occasionally and with a few scars to show. Physically he became a presence and a force, transforming from a skinny, lanky, lonesome boy into a tall, broad, handsome silhouette of a man. He spent most evenings running or lifting weights, joined cross country and a few other teams before finding his home in lacrosse.

Amid it all, at thirteen he discovered the insoluble element of romantic love, or lack thereof.

Her name was Sarah. She was three years older and paid by his parents for piano lessons, though House learned nothing about music from the girl. The original instructor was an old German woman who died after three sessions and was somehow replaced by a tall brunette with absolutely no knowledge of notation but whose breasts compensated for this much, at least twice over.

He no longer needed lessons and could play proficiently since he was nine. But Blythe insisted that he didn't know everything, yet. He was so comfortable at the keys that the piano began to bore him and the forced instruction from an inferior player made the music seem like a waste of time.

Three times a week he saw Sarah, often they were left alone in an empty room, hollow except for the piano and with their awkward interaction at the center of it. House disliked her at first. Sure, she was better than grandma Wagner but she came off as coquettish, pretentious and abundantly annoying. Sarah was barely three years his senior but treated him like a child. She feigned experience (at the keys and in general) and was a bad liar. Their roles were not friendly.

Until one day they were.

House heard her talking on the telephone. His parents were gone (his father was deployed and his mother was distracted) and Sarah often did that, spent five minutes with him and forty five on the phone. He always let her, never tattling about her shrugging off of responsibility, if for no other reason than the opportunity to eves drop.

The conversations she had were usually obscenely boring. She'd be complaining to a girlfriend about a bad grade on a biology exam or some new addition to her wardrobe. House listened only out of curiosity, he knew little about teenage girls except what he'd deduced over the last few years.

One day her side of the conversation became much more interesting. She was whispering when House was about to abandon her for the more captivating entertainment of television when he heard the word 'sex.' Not 'love', or 'breasts', or 'kiss', none of the elements of the vocabulary associated with or leading to the act itself, but the word banal and beautiful from her lips to his heart, '_sex_.'

The three letters invaded his imagination and House stood very still, listening for what he hoped would be a detailed recount of a recent romp. But to his dismay she continued quietly and in a tone that suggested disgust more than triumph. He wanted to stop listening but couldn't. Sarah was confessing a sort of blunder, the experience of inexperience that is sixteen.

Her boyfriend, or ex boyfriend, had futilely attempted seduction the night before and she panicked, pushing him off of her and bruising more than his ego, ending everything. He left humiliated and cursing and House was about to hear of his anatomical defects when,

"Greg! What are you doing?"

House was caught but he couldn't look at her. As he stared at his feet his cheeks were burning, coloring his face like a low incessant fever. He didn't answer and desperately hoped that his silence needed no explanation. It was only after a long stagnant stretch that the shame and blush receded, as if their cause had already been forgotten, or his sin absolved, when he looked at her again. Then he saw Sarah wasn't angry, her eyes were full of feminine tears. She was hurt, resigned, but none of the pain was because of him. When finally she could no longer suppress a sob, she walked over to the piano bench and sat. She covered her face and he watched for the first time tears shed out of an irrational and doomed love, the end of a love, but not the last.

Suddenly aware and confidant that they were completely alone and would be for a while, he sat beside her, considered playing a song he had begun composing over the last several weeks, but didn't. Instead his arm curled around her and a trembling hand rested low on her back. He was holding her in a withdrawn, present but imperfect way; the only way he knew how. After a few minutes her crying stopped and Sarah rested her head on his shoulder.

The warmth of proximity spurred the shy intelligent boy as he stood wavering at the starting line of a new, incredible marathon. Manhood seemed a whim away. The knowledge of the solace his shoulder could provide was unfamiliar but comfortably intimate. Voluntary exposure was rare; she had no reason to trust him and yet she did. The weight was a reinforcement, the embrace an epiphany, the silent static inspiration. Sarah sat up, their faces close, the stream of tears had finally stopped. Her hazel eyes were looking at him, as if to apologize, but helpless and speechless, she was lost.

An almost chemical change seemed to dissolve and recompose the very elements of his body. A rigor passed over him, blood rose through his body from his toes to his,forehead and there was a steady thumping in his ears. It was first love and one chance.

Certain there was nothing else he could do, House leaned in and kissed her. It was bold and brash and made genuine with his abashed reluctance. A light meeting of lips, their mouths stayed together, tips of noses tickling for a long minute. Tasting the black cherries of her lip gloss and salt of her tears, he kissed her again and again, deeper and with a strange sentimental conviction, wanting to do more than extend the embrace, he wanted to instill permanence through repetition, memorization by means of refrain.

It was music. Or what music should be––––a delicate warm expression, gentle, physical sincerity blind with enchantment. He felt that life was just beginning. There was more than this he knew, but he'd seen the world already, he'd run from problems and wept from pain and now he was standing still. In this moment he hoped was endless, he was happy. It didn't matter where he was because he was with her.

They kissed her until they heard a door slam.

Sarah wiped away her tears and he stroked her hair, his voice masculine without being mature as he whispered some sweet nothing in her ear. Love and longing were real, they could be tangible and captured, if only by accident.

There on the bench he had the overwhelming desire to lose his virginity to this girl, this sad girl whose head wasn't heavy on his shoulder, this girl who was moments earlier nothing more than an older stranger. He wanted to share his secrets with Sarah. He wanted to know hers. Undressing or dissecting, this was his first poetic desire for the knowledge nobody else had.

Footsteps followed the sound of the door slamming, the echo of stilettos that made House cringe. It was Blythe. She'd returned with groceries or dry cleaning and soon her voice would be interrupting the cathartic reticence of the brief but addictive taste that was romantic potential.

He was grinning when he began playing again. Silence would have raised suspicion and both of their lips were glistening. C flat, A minor, eventually a song, it was Sarah's song, though neither of them knew it yet. When he sensed his mother behind him, House pretended to miss a key and let his new girlfriend correct him. It was convincing, it was a lie, it was their beginning but no mistake.

Sarah left late, a little relieved and with a new incentive for her part time job. She'd be back twice that week and House was high on the thought, relishing in her obligation, an exalted virginal enthusiasm radiating from his chest. His heart was wide open for the very first time, a heart with expectations, a heart that had to be broken.

For a moment he considered running after her, kissing her on the sidewalk or street, announcing and flaunting the mutual want that made the kiss happen. But he sat too long, ruminating about what they might do the next time they meet and about his breath and what he should do with his tongue.

His audacity seemed to thrive when the stakes were highest––– he was risking rejection, and getting caught and the thrill was in the confrontation, the calculated risk and its reward.

The kiss made him reconsider a loveless life, it made him believe that honesty existed, not everybody lies.

It was not his first kiss. But it was the first kiss that meant something. And so, after thirteen consecutive years of insignificant transience, House stumbled upon meaning simply by listening, there to be leaned on, and with a kiss––– the same way he would years later and in his boss's hallway.

The affair with Sarah went on for weeks. They were always left alone together.

At first they sat on the bench, it was an excuse to be close, he'd hold her hand, stroke her arm, blow in her ear. When finally they kissed, it was commensurate to a crescendo.

Sometimes they'd kiss furiously, expelling all the day's teenaged angst, his hands on her hips, her nails tracing the curve of his ears as she'd bite his bottom lip. Over time, his confidence and experience grew and House would lead them to his bedroom as nonchalantly as his arousal would allow, where they'd make out on his mattress, slow but urgent, until they forgot the clock was ticking.

It was all pressing and probing, nothing more than heavy petting. Their clothes stayed on and he didn't mind because he was finally learning something from the girl. Each session offered new information about sex and love and loyalty and women. The best education was kissing behind closed doors. Sarah's was the first female button he'd unbuttoned but her body was only a part of it. House involuntarily found her interesting. And through this affair with an older girl, his ego was born.

They'd lay side by side on the bed for an hour, his arm a strong loop, her hair dark perfection spilling across his pillows. He anticipated their meetings, but was bad at hiding it and knew his mother was beginning to suspect something.

At night when he missed her, he'd struggle with that feeling of loss and absence, almost sentimental, only to find a greater wave of emotion wash over him. Loving her might be insane or impossible, because he can't stay here, he can never just _stay_. House wondered if there could be passion without permanence, if his ambitions were being influenced by these thoughts and feelings he couldn't name, couldn't describe, illogical and unscientific. It couldn't be real, just another aspect of the juvenalia he'd never shed and something else he'd always a regret.

Music was math before Sarah, scales and notation, time signature and duration, it was all numbers, he was always counting. There was no heart, no soul in any song. When he was alone and could think of nothing but her, he'd write. What he saw in her, what he felt, what he wanted and believed, he'd rhyme it all into a rhythm. House devoted countless hours to composing a poetic promise.

Prosody made it a science, verse without voice in some abstract inexpressible expression. It wasn't a love song. It was a tribute to truth, this girl he thought was honesty incarnate and the hope of something more.

When he'd finished it, rewritten, revised and reconsidered, he decided to play it for her, to seduce or impress, really  
confess ––––what she was to him.

The night of his planned, personal concert she arrived late. An air of uncertainty fill Sarah's face but House took her hand and lead her to the piano, his palms sweaty, fingers trembling when they finally touched the keys.

He played for her and she knew what it was, his song for her. The brilliant Byronic boy had actually felt something and he could admit it. But this was too much, too emotional, too mature. She wanted to stop him, to try and explain that they're not the same, that this was all just supposed to be a game, but the music was too beautiful to interrupt. It was sad and short, resonating grace, emphatic and original, each chord was a revelation, the entire piece a release, the look in her eyes as she watched him perform was such like the dream he longed for and never thought he'd find.

The echo of the last note was forever, as close to forever as he thought he'd ever be. Silence surrounded them until the end of that eternity. They were still in a breathless hush, mute out of the fear that the spell would break and they'd fall without wings out of paradise.

Speechless, Sarah was staring at him, down, then at their reflection in the black gloss of the Steinway. Words seemed useless by then, and though he choked on his first thought, House knew he had to say something.

"I was wondering if you wanted to start ––––" His voice cracked unromantically, in that pubescent tone and the moment called for masculine reticence rather than boyish candor. So he sat a minute, took her hand again, not even questioning if it was the next logical step. He'd aged years since they met.

"I think I'm going to be here a while," a lie but mostly hope, he had to hope.

"Sarah, I think..."

"I think..." Softly and for the first time,

"I love you."

House leaned in, trying to whisper, trying to kiss her.

"No," she said pulling her hand away and standing.

"No you don't."

"You're just a boy, Greg. We can't keep doing this," said Sarah.

"But–––"

"I shouldn't see you anymore. I can't. I'm sorry."

With a peck on the cheek and the slam of a door his first love was gone.

Sudden revulsion seized House, disgust and loathing for the whole incident, the affair, for being open and having any expectations. Injured naivete had his face red and his ears ringing. He desired frantically to be away, to another country, another planet if possible and to never see her again, to never kiss her or anyone ever again.

He ran to his bedroom and plummeted to the floor. Burying himself under blankets, he hated everything–––the room, the music, the bed where they had sprawled lazily, thinking in terms of dreams, remote, languorous, content. The room echoed with emptiness.

It had all been meaningless, as insignificant as anything. Hollow, he felt worse when he was motionless.

So he stood, he ran. He ran away.

Soles were in his hands and shoes on his feet then flashing through a patch of moonlight, darting into a blind labyrinth of alleys and becoming a turbulent scuffle somewhere in the enfolding darkness. Heel over gate, knee over fence he left the pain behind him, dying in the dust, trying to catch up.

Camp Pendleton was his father's base five miles north and he was running in that direction, feeling like he needed punished, beat, kicked and punched, he wanted the physical pain over what he was feeling, the heart that wouldn't stop bleeding.

The Oceanside dusk laid between two mountains like a gigantic bruise from which dark arteries spread themselves over a poisoned sky. He ran for hours, until the twilight coagulated into night and he was standing in silence except for footsteps and the cars that passed and didn't notice him.

He ran away until he realized he couldn't.

When House got home he was dehydrated, his knees were aching and the blood of his bleeding heart was beginning to clot, soon to be a scab and then a scar. Dizzy and gasping, close to puking, he was proud. He'd never run farther or faster, harder or longer. With return he'd not forgotten, the world was continually wounding him.

House climbed to his bedroom, showered and changed, trying, determined not to cry. It was his selfishness, he told himself. That's why he was so hurt.

The room paled, the dark was shot through with damp and chill and the first flare of dawn was lit to a yellowish gray. He sat at his desk, his pulse rapid, his heart beating allegro, still threatening to escape his ribs. The desk was cluttered and he went scavenging through drawers in search of a book, something to comfort or relax him, in lieu of a confidant, a father or friend.

Instead he found a snapshot. It was Sarah, smiling from a step. He'd taken it when they first began ascending to his bedroom. He took it to remember her when he was gone, in another place, another time and never thought he'd need it so soon, he never thought she'd leave first.

In the same drawer there was a lighter (he began smoking cigarettes the year before and would try pot the year after) and he picked it up, holding the picture above his thumb and the flame. But he couldn't burn it. She had become a part of him, some integral aspect of his identity and life that he couldn't destroy and that scared him. The memory of her will always be more haunting than recollection.

Eventually the photograph would get lost, forgotten or left behind when he moved again but there were days when he sat at the piano and played that song, the melancholy ballad that would have been Sarah's serenade.

Crestfallen and crushed, under the aching sadness, he knew he'd lost something but he didn't know why and he didn't know what. He had a vision of his world as a place where love was unlikely and life was unfair. Lost youth and wasted time were a dismal payment for maturity, bitter calomel beneath the thin sugar of love's exaltation. For the first time he witnessed the rise, crest and decay of all that he felt was meaningful.

He quit meaning or she quit him.

After Sarah, House traded the piano for a guitar, started saving for his first motorcycle and swore he'd never fall in love.

_**untouchable**_

Misadventures of adolescence continued in Japan. The age of believing was over, everything had to be scientific, quantifiable, proven. House took a profound interest in chemistry, learning elements and formulas and the composition of everything down to the molecule, the atom, every subatomic particle.

The crucible beneath the beaker in the lab was a test, the fire his future.

Here, he dove into the culture and emerged a new person. Like Japan itself, he was experiencing a rebirth. Okinawa was no longer under American occupation and following the shock of the oil crisis in 1973, the nation would shift to technological industries. There was still the stigma of devastation from world war and a sigh of relief with independence. House's classmates were less than amicable with him and he had few friends there except a couple fellow military brats.

Outside of Kadena Air Base, one boy approached the tall abrasive newcomer, the stranger who could never stay. His name was Reginald Kurosawa, he was half English, poor and less than popular; they became buddies immediately.

Reggie was a quiet, private boy, aloof at times and beyond a few deductions House knew little of his new friend, so it promised a rich confectionery for his curiosity when Reggie invited him to spend a weekend at Cape Meada.

On the first day they went rock climbing. Or, to be more accurate they went

seventy foot long half-submerged bouldering _cave_ climbing. They crawled across the two traversing routes, up one side of the cave and down the other with a sort of ignorant courage, feeling no sense of danger because of the water beneath them. But on Reggie's descent, he lost his footing on the wet rocks and fell hard, scraping his chin, breaking a few toes and landing on his arm.

House took him to the hospital.

They came in through the wrong entrance and passed a man in the hallway, wheeling a mop and bucket. Unkept and wearing clothes that were grimy and tattered even for a janitor, as Reggie was rushed into the ER, House waited and stared at the strange man a while before being told of his origins. He was a baraku,

his ancestors had held occupations considered unclean; they were tanners, gravediggers, slaughterers. Untouchables, only because of the curse of genealogy, inheriting like himself, a hereditary stipulation, a stain on their identity.

Before the weekend was over Reggie came down with an infection. His doctors didn't know what to do and House watched his new and only friend deteriorate. Until they called in the janitor. He was a doctor. The guy who knew he wasn't accepted by the staff, who didn't even try, who didn't care that he was ostracized, was needed–––––because he was right. The excluded was the best. They had to listen to him and nothing else mattered.

While Reggie recovered, House visited and investigated the hospital, he watched what the doctors did but never forgot about the baraku. He felt he was already one and knew medical school could make him the other.

It was fortuitous irony, after a crash from a cave and the puss of an infection, House had a goal, an agenda. He had a dream to make a difference, in spite of his difference. He was destined to be a doctor.

The next year he was in the states again, still brooding over his own tainted origins, in a place without ancestral discrimination yet he still didn't fit in. Amid his internal turmoil, another obsession was beginning to dominate his psyche: sex. Or, to be more accurate: sex _with_ someone––––the loss of his virginity. It was a hindrance, a restraint, a weight he longed to have lifted more than anything.

Girls were a game. When one said yes, he'd take her to the drive-in and kiss and caress in the humidity of the backseat, concentrating on little more than making it to the next base. But a sports metaphor hardly did it justice.

House was curious about what made girls come and how it was different. Many nights he'd ride home with a few fingers glistening but without ever receiving reciprocity. During less active spells, he masturbated in the absence of female companions, waiting and wondering how, if and when he'd finally lose it.

It wasn't that he didn't have any contact with girls but they were rare events, as isolated as stars in the sky. His own lust was insatiable and the fingering sessions that seemed more like anatomy lessons or the occasional circle jerk with details of other boy's exploits, did little to temper his anticipation. He'd fluster the hearts of many girls in the years to come, but for now was still stuck in the shallow end of the pool of sexual exploration

Beyond sex, the horizon of his interest narrowed to science. And, speed. House had finally saved enough money and bought a motorcycle. During the night he spent in the hospital after his first accident (three weeks before he got his driver's license), he had the pessimistic foresight to realize that the scar on his nose would always be there even when the bike and the drive were gone.

_**forever lost**_

Spring and sixteen arrived simultaneously. Prom was late that year and so was House. He appeared on his bike an hour into the celebration and unaware it was occurring. He was at the school because he'd forgotten something. Notes, and not his own. House knew the night janitor would let him in, thus allowing him to sustain the illusion that he was taking no notes in class and still acing every exam.

Walking up the stairs and past the pretty people, he didn't envy any of the suits and ties or boys in them wearing too much cologne, nor did he look twice at any of the corsages on the made up girls whose heads rested in forced tranquility on their horny date's shoulders as they slowly and pitifully attempted to waltz. Formality, conformity, dancing––– it wasn't his style.

So House walked out quickly and unseen, with pilfered notes and his bike keys in hand, snarling in disdain at the pop song that initiated his exit.

Over the sound of his keys and slosh of his own footsteps in muddy grass, he heard a loud sob. It was coming from a shadow beneath the security light, a girl. House hesitated then approached her, looming a long minute before asking if she was okay. As the girl's body racked with exaggerated sobs, he could understand nothing except that her son of a bitch date abandoned her.

His first instinct was to turn away, the female frustration impaired speech was irritating and she was fine, physically. He couldn't help her. And consoling a sad strange girl three years earlier had only left him hurt.

She seemed weak, leaning on the wall and when Nicole finally wiped her face House saw a black streak across the top of her hand from the mascara and offered to give her a ride home.

There was no motivation behind his offer other than the sight of painted sorrow. There was no logic either. It wasn't quite sympathy or compassion but the visibility of her pain struck a chord, like a bloody nose, so he didn't leave alone.

As he drove into her driveway House saw there were no lights on and during his walk beside her to the door asked if her parents were already asleep. She said they weren't home. In the dim ocher light of the porch lamp, he smiled. Perhaps the mundane mission of the night had deviated.

Nicole added that they were gone until Monday. It was just her and her brother for the weekend and he was still at the prom. When finally she unlocked the door House held his breath. Time seemed to stop as he leaned in to kiss her goodnight, but she halted the kiss by speaking and his lips landed on her cheek. The words altered his target in more ways than one, it was an invitation inside.

Such an invitation from a melancholy girl, with no parents in the zip code, late on prom night means one thing: an end to all the speculation about the joys and expectations of the promised event, the act, the accomplishment––––the experience of a lifetime, or at least the first.

And so a thievery propelled bike ride would end with the loss of his virginity. It was an unforeseeable concession and there's an appeal to spontaneity when you're sixteen and transience is you're only routine, instability an addiction. House swallowed as best he could but his mouth had gone dry. They stepped inside.

Beaming with tremendous anxiety, his heart was a raucous drum, the only sound he could hear. The first time, any first time, (seeing '2001: A Space Odyssey', hearing 'Baba O' Riley') was always the greatest experience, leaving a permanent impression, unpredictable and unimaginable.

What if he did something wrong? What if her parents came home or her brother walked in? How was his breath, he didn't have condoms, was she on the pill? They hardly knew each other, she had been in one of his classes, maybe.

It was opportunity more than attraction and that almost made him reconsider.

Then the breathless impendency of the event swept his mind clear of details. This was it—unsought, unsuspected months before, minutes––– but now breaking in silver light through the window, dancing along the carpet as though the moon were smiling at the now inevitable act, the moment had arrived.

Cobalt fingernails raked through his hair and he was walking backwards as her tongue lapped along his tonsils. With little reluctance, his hands cupped her ass, she tugged on his collar and peeled him out of the leather jacket. They found her bedroom with closed eyes, he reached for a light switch but she turned on a lamp. Fumbling frantically with his fly while trying to concentrate on kissing her, sixteen years of hormones had House grinning and groping like a stammering moron. He knew she wasn't a virgin and tried desperately to hide the fact he was nervous and all other apparent anxieties about his inexperience.

Nicole was neither gorgeous nor a novice and through their coital exposition the combination of ardor and clumsiness made him, for a moment, wish it were different. But his dreams of a pleasure so vast he screams, of a wet and waiting inconsequential weight being lifted, made him settle for what he had in front of him.

In and attempt to recompose, his fingers settled around one thin strap of her gown sliding it to the point of her shoulder, almost off. She had helmet hair after the ride there but one sable curl fell free and curved around her blushed cheek.

It was suspended surreality, that this was happening: he found the zipper at the back of the dress and pulled it down, slow enough to leave them both aching, until it slid down her body. She was naked after the snap of a bra, standing in a pool of taffeta and tulle, breathing long and slow into his mouth as he cradled her breast, finding a nipple and teasing it hard. House was sweating now, sweltering in the heat of her bedroom, a smug condescending smile shaping and all thumbs.

Nicole sat on the edge of the bed and House was about to follow when her hand splayed across his abdomen and he stood in front of her like that, dizzy with weak knees and calves cramping from the tension of the moment. She slid his jeans down and he threw his shirt across the room and waited.

One finger stroked horizontal across the elastic of his briefs. She tugged. His erection was impressive, the slow friction of its reveal enough to make him come. Rampaging upright, bending a little to the left, there was no modesty, no embarrassment, just pride. And her lips, inches away.

Moving it from side to side, gripping it with her hand, tugging on it with the other and then giving him three, four quick hard strokes before several excruciatingly slow ones, Nicole took every inch of him in her mouth, choking the base, squeezing the straining stiffness then tenderly easing the sensitive skin up and over the head before releasing it, filling the small dim room with the slippery sounds of sex.

The sight of his shaft disappearing down her throat and the unbelievable, indescribably astounding suction of her mouth had House on the edge already, squinting and panting in short wordless gusts. She licked and sucked and kissed the proud purple tip, stroking until he grunted. It was a guttural sound Nicole had heard many times before and, bored and heartbroken herself, she unclenched her fist releasing him right before eruption.

Turning the lamp off, she laid back on the bed. House stepped out of the jeans and underwear that were at his ankles and climbed on top of her. He braced himself above her, positioning his erection between his fingers like a pool cue and penetrating her in a fluid thrust that surprised them both. They shut their eyes and a moment later he opened his to see her lashes long and lids shaded with grayer remnants of the mascara that motivated, the reason he was here. He kissed her forehead and her nose, bracketing her shoulders between his elbows before settling deep and beginning to move in her experimentally. He clutched hard at her shoulder but she pretended not to notice and rolled her hips up to meet his.

Each thrust was slow and tentative, he'd been close since the middle of the bike ride there but had the persevering intent to not disappoint. He regretted the ordinary position, trying to distract himself by speculating why it's called missionary, and wished he could let her lead. He considered a strong clasp and rolling over until she was on top but doubted the bed was large enough for such a heroic attempt.

It was less awkward than he would have imagined, had he any premonition of how the night would progress. A certain amount of serotonin allowed spontaneity to eclipse inexperience.

Following the first few minutes, House wondered if he was hurting her because she never stopped wincing. He wished he could hold her breasts but his lips made up for this, tongue circling, sucking one nipple. Tasting soap and eliciting no response, his mouth resigned from her chest. When he examined her expression, her eyes avoided his. It wasn't love and part of him liked that.

He ground down, tangling pubic hair, coiled curls and light brown fur. With his face buried against her neck, his forehead sinking into the pillow, House found that he had enough leverage to angle for depth. The smooth lunges and deep breaths he took were evocative, raising a familiar emotion, recognition and a sense of well being. The sense was scent, Sarah's shampoo. Music was playing behind his closed eyes, he could see the girl, hear her song and imagined that he really was making love to her.

The lie could only last so long. He opened his eyes, trying to hold his breath, jerked a few times, involuntarily, then withdrew almost completely. When he thrust again Nicole moaned. Then words followed that were mostly nonsense and profanity, soft and damp, her voice tempting and luring, provoking and stoking all the restraint he could manage for a few more escalatory minutes.

When she said 'Greg' it sounded like a question and he wondered if she didn't remember, or ever really know his name. (Detachment would come to satisfy him but now is was simply depressing). He answered the question with a few short quick pushes and small shifts until they finally found a rhythm. Nicole sighed with her legs wrapped around him, her nails digging into his shoulders and scratching the side of his neck as she pushed up to meet his every downstroke.

House held back as long as he could. He tried kissing her but they were faint and sloppy and altogether unwanted. Before he came, House had an epiphany: that it was all misdirected pent up passion, a mistake. He was still thinking of Sarah, of what they could have had, of tomorrow, of what it all means. Then he tried to force it away, the pain and loss and memories that didn't matter because it was too late.

His pelvis was pistoning, the collision of hips was bruisingly rough, jutting as his biceps flexed and his face contorted. He had some idea of the spectacle it must have been––– the fury of his humping and her immobility, of one's enthusiasm and the other's absence of expectations. He half laughed, half gagged when he realized that this was it, the long sought thrill he'd dreamed about for so many years. There was regret enough that he wanted to stop.

But she squirmed and squeezed, contracting around him until he let go and came hard, long and deep, with someone, for the first time.

After the hormones and adrenaline ebbed away, prolactin flowed through his body and he felt tired. House didn't know if he should sleep or leave. His feet were cold but from the ankles up he was on fire. Sweat ran down his temple and his chest heaved for a long time.

Skewed by a sinister slant of light, whatever he had, was voluntarily lost. More than his virginity, he had he lost something precious or wasted something that could have been meaningful, monumental, memorable. Was he a victim of his own impatience? Did he sacrifice the hope of something better for instant gratification?

For pathological curiosity, for the pleasure of lust?

Did he just succumb out of residual regret for the loss of Sarah? An irreversible blunder, firsts are the most difficult experiences to erase from memory and from a conscience. Rather than a triumphant feeling of what finally was, he had only the tragic sense of what shouldn't have been.

House's stomach and heart sank with the realization that he had not just lost something significant, but significance itself. The potential evaporated and it would be years before it reappeared.

He was expecting it to make him feel mature, some milestone or turning point, the proverbial right of passage. House didn't come of age but he did come––inside a girl who, not until he was panting post-climax, did he realize was blonde. It was a bleach blonde, fake like her orgasm. Nothing had changed, the sensation was new, but not really different. It wasn't until the experience was in the past tense that he saw it was boring, ordinary and strived to make it interesting. extraordinary, something sublime.

Later, after the other awkward firsts of dressing and leaving and saying goodbye to someone he didn't love, didn't really even know, House slipped back into his bedroom early enough that neither of his parents knew he'd ever gone out.

He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling unable to sleep, wondering what it meant, what everything meant and if knowing would make a difference.

_**cheating, chance and chronology**_

At seventeen he saw his first Stones concert. 'Let It Bleed' had been a satirical response and when he bought the record he was already thinking in terms of tourniquets and O negative. 'Goat's Head Soup' was a delicacy and 'Somegirls' had yet to be released but he would come to agreement with the advantages of promiscuity and 'Lies,' of course.

House had all of their albums by then, most scratched or with a torn sleeve or lost somewhere, from moving so much. The experience of seeing them in Madison Square Garden was phenomenal. They lived in Connecticut that year, and House was harboring his enthusiasm about starting college that fall.

High school graduation was ceremoniously formal, less memorable than seeing the Glimmer Twins [Jagger and Richards] live in New York. John, still hoping his son would go to West Point, was beaming pride regardless as he was honored at the top of his glass, granted awards and scholarships and admission to Johns Hopkins University.

The day he moved out couldn't have come quick enough. Greg was gone, leaving John and Blythe with years more of roaming and promising himself a few semesters of staying in one state.

He excelled in academics, as was expected. He didn't join a fraternity but partied enough to cover the entire Greek alphabet. House ran and rowed again and was on the winning lacrosse team when the Blue Jays took the NCAA championship his third year.

The transition from high school to Hopkins was the making of the man. He left his boyhood blunders behind him and marched forward, with more intelligence and experience than most of those in his class. Charming and charismatic, he was exceedingly handsome, had poise and personality without perfect posture or shaving regularly. Beneath the aura of condescension and curiosity he remained cold, calculating and calloused.

He cheated.

Everybody knew him but few liked the enigma. Dylan Crandall was his friend and roommate for a while. Their refrigerator, at any point in time, had little in it other than beer and ice cream. But Crandall had a car and a conscience and would believe just about anything. House took advantage of all three of these traits. Crandall fell in love and fell in love again, House tried to ignore the stupidly sensitive naïveté and for the most part was a good friend.

More than biology or chemistry or physics, House studied sex as an undergrad. He was much better looking than the other eventual doctors, his seduction techniques had become more sophisticated and the girls had become easier.

Crandall's girlfriend, (who he was considering marrying) was flaky, she was a flirt. She took advantage of him to the point that it was impeding House's perks. Then one night when she was high and he was drunk, House received the most exquisite blowjob from the girl, then outed her as a liar and watched as his friend walked away.

When he was sober again he felt guilty. But he was right about the girl ans her mixed signals. He proved it. And he regretted it. Such is the finality of infidelity.

House's sexual identity transformed after a few pelvis thrusting years as an undergrad. The emptiness overwhelmed the pleasure, he became more aware of the absence of something he never had, that he might never have. Did he yearn for meaning? No. But he wondered about it. Should he search for it, wait for it, give up completely?

The PreMed curriculum passed and soon House was reeking havoc in the halls of the medical school. He was on track to graduate early and was already considering what his second specialty would be. Studying under Brightman and Gilmar, he was learning from the best and establishing his reputation as the cocky kid whose brilliance was unbridled and whose bedside manner was nonexistent.

He exasperated every instructor, every doctor and nurse, everybody he impressed and diagnosed and treated and some he didn't. There was no doubt that he would be a doctor but that he _should_ be, there was much.

House applied for an internship at the Mayo Clinic early his second year as a med student. He had a handful of recommendations and the opportunity was practically a guarantee. There would have been challenging patient cases under the supervision of one of the country's leading diagnosticians. It would have been the apex of his education, working with the best doctors, sophisticated technology at his disposal, ongoing education and the most valuable resource of all: tanned girls in bikinis. The internship would have gotten him away from the Chesapeake and near to the ocean, he'd have spent the summer in Florida.

It's ancient history now, what would have been. A myth really, him losing the Doyle internship and getting expelled, Philip Weber and the suicide of a certain future. An allegory maybe, with Von Lieberman the rat and House the dishonest hero with the moral being 'don't cheat' or 'stop taking shortcuts' or don't trust the answer of a competitor.

His philosophy of success tumbled down upon him and House applied and was accepted to the University of Michigan without ever looking for the reasons. He was lazy, arrogant but almost always right . This time, it didn't matter.

It was a crippling blow, not just that he lost a prestigious vacation or that he got booted from one of the best medical schools in the world––––expulsion wasn't the same as rejection, he could handle getting kicked out. House lost his home. A lifetime spent constantly moving, he stayed in one state for almost six years and this self sabotage left it the same as always, incomplete and pushed forward.

-

But what was the loss of one opportunity would become much more than a second chance. As he approached Ann Arbor more than twenty years ago, House had no idea how it would change everything. He was only there to finish what he started. It was supposed to be an ending, but it was only the beginning.

The years spent there would redefine his life, reintroduce meaning and more. He'd find himself and he'd be found, for the first time, by somebody else.

In the chronology of his life House knows now, there would be everything before and then there would be Lisa Cuddy.

* * *

_This is the hiatus fic I promised. Since hiatus is almost over I thought I should start posting it.  
It's a post ep for JTTW, starts canon but by the 4th chapter will be AU. It will be 9 chapters in 3 volumes, 3 chapters per volume. Though this is a post 5x11 ep, the first two chapters are backstory, so I apologize for the nonlinear way it's told. I'm still working on this so there should be days between chapter updates and a week or two between volume updates. I really hope people read and enjoy this and keep reading it as it's updated because I'm feeling really drained and insecure right now but I think this story goes a lot of interesting places.  
I will try and post entire first volume by the 19th. Thank you for reading!** Please comment**._


	2. Commence, meant

**II. commence, meant**

Lisa Cuddy did not notice the sun shining down the street, burning asphalt and illuminating her August arrival. Nor did she take a moment to stare at the slow clouds sailing above the willows in the serene cerulean sky surrounding the hill of her dormitory. She was boundless ambition, concerned only with memorizing her impossible schedule and meeting her new roommate.

Lifting and dragging boxes and crates, Cuddy felt the heat of the summer day, her hair pulled back in a ponytail with sweat running through the valleys of her knuckles and off of the top of her hand as she wiped her face. She'd worked hard

to get here and the University of Michigan was her home now and for the next seven years.

Stockwell Hall was a tall red brick building, a freshmen female only residence in the Hill neighborhood, between central campus and the medical center. Cuddy piled her things on top of the bottom bunk, stacking the rest on her desk and ate dinner in the cafeteria with her roommate, Jamie.

Jamie was Jewish and beyond that the two girls had nothing in common. Cuddy ate vanilla ice cream and Jamie chocolate. Cuddy drank Coke and Jamie Pepsi. They were black and white with a gray table between them. Jamie was a theater major with talent, she could dance and sing and was insincere enough to act, while Cuddy was clumsy, shy, tone deaf and contemplative.

The claustrophobic room that they were forced to return to was intolerably humid even as a dusk breeze trespassed through the window screen. Jamie fell asleep late with one arm dangling down from the top bunk bed. But Cuddy sat awake and watched the shade of sunset dissolve into tomorrow. Only then did she realize what a beautiful day it had been for a new beginning.

Lisa and Jamie, as the RA's artwork on their door described them (in neon bubble letters, with glitter, an amperstance and inappropriate exclamation points), shared space and nothing more. They talked and roamed the campus together that first week, then spoke so little after fitting into their proper cliques that there were days they forgot that they lived together, or denied it.

Cuddy's first friend at U of M was an old friend, really. He'd lived at the other end of her block for as long as she could remember. Bryan Taylor and she had grown up together in the safe and green suburbs of East Lansing.

He was the first boy to kiss her, and the last as it were.

Cuddy was accomplished in countless commendable ways. She graduated high school valedictorian, won tournament after tournament in tennis and had a concerned conscience that took the Hypocratic oath at twelve. She was an ideal pupil, an amazing girl and a virgin.

She'd lived a rather sheltered life before college, with days spent in the same seats of an all girls private school. Bryan was the extent of her experience with boys and from her first day as a coed, she longed to change that.

Bryan was her best friend. An engineering major and not unattractive, Cuddy had envisioned many scenarios in which they came together. She always thought he would be her first because they'd knew each other so well and for so long. But as the weeks passed, so closed the window of opportunity. Bryan began dating Jamie in a twisted drama of irony and then faded away until she was left best friendless.

Beyond Bryan, just as before, there was Biology. She had academics and work study and a bright future in medicine. The standard Premed education requirements —–– one year of biology, two years of chemistry, one year of physics and one year of mathematics was highlighted not by business electives that would have been invaluable for her administrative promotion but by more advanced sciences.

Maxwell Hamilton was her professor for three of the aforementioned classes in her first three semesters. He taught Human Anatomy and Physiology and was admired by the eighteen year old for diligently teaching all of the aspiring physicians and for his own anatomy as well. He had a PhD and was in his second year at Michigan's medical school, a student still himself, teaching part time, soon to be an MD and only in his early thirties.

Cuddy saw he was brilliant, troubled, lonely maybe. His eyes were jade traced with hazel and he rarely shaved, which aged him in a way she appreciated. A hint of gray along the sideburns framing his face and the tone of his voice as he lectured, its confidence and conviction, were curiously irresistible. She had a sense of them both being the same somehow, trying to make a difference, excelling and exceeding, caring and curing, accepting the destinies of doctors.

It was admiration and veneration, respect and sexual fixation. The first semester was just quick shifting glances, wearing more makeup to his class, her pearls and best clothes. She studied arduously, determined to impress him with her intellect and he noticed. She immediately became teacher's pet.

Max was motivation. Cuddy knew it was unrealistic, the scandalous scenarios consuming her imagination, images, emotions, desire. His hands, on the rare occasion that they held chalk and wrote something on the blackboard, were ringless, which made the ethical lapse of coital discourse between professor and pupil seem slightly less unforgivable. Ultimately, she thought nothing would happen between them. As much as she wanted to kiss, strip, ride her instructor, his body would remain unattainable, as one dimensional as a textbook illustration.

The next semester saw winter turn the lake to tundra and by the time it thawed she was baring more cleavage, tighter jeans and a darker shade of lipstick. Chaste, intelligent, beautiful when her nose wasn't buried behind a book, Max saw Cuddy watching him with wide eyes and relentless ambition.

Nineteen now, the ineffable angst had become intolerable. There was no hope of waiting until marriage. Her career would come before any relationship, pursuit before pleasure, misery and denial–––––she was desperate for experience, for release, with a man she admired, and lust as much as trust.

Involuntarily, or not, she began flirting with Max. They came closer each week, huddling together over an essay, she'd lean on his desk or he'd stick his head over her shoulder during an exam. Labs and lecture halls were not the settings most conducive to seduction but the subtly of their foreplay was harmless, fingers lingering, palms touching when nobody was looking, electric and effortless chemistry in Biology.

He embodied medicine and education, the most essential elements of her future–––his five o'clock shadow, disheveled, sometimes sad face and the ingeniousness that was embedded in the hue of his eyes, would reoccur one day in a form she had not yet but soon would meet.

-

'_Shine a Ligh_t' was spinning on the turntable. '_Exile on Main St._' seemed the most appropriate album for themoment. House had been exiled, expelled, ostracized one more time. Unpacking seemed useless, he had less than two years left, without a day to catch his breath. He was alone but not lonely. Bored perhaps, watching vinyl revolve, he ventured out on a tepid April day.

Canvassing the campus, his curiosity led him to court. A tennis court.

It was after noon and hot now, the season doing an exceptional impersonation of summer. The golf course was close and varsity basketball around the corner but a tennis match had reached its middle and he wandered closer to it.

Pink and nubile, sweating and in a short skirt Lisa Cuddy was, indeed, kicking ass.

The sun was a scorching star aligning at an angle that cast her opponent's shadow opaque and obtuse, doomed for defeat. Tennis was more than a sport to her. She was not just playing, she was winning.

House wanted to start something with the girl, an argument, an affair, his indecision halted an approach, the impulsive interruption he yearned for. She was an undergrad still, full of the hope to help and repulsed by cynicism and anything that negated her naivete.

The court was clay, its surface a revelation, an unforgettable stage for strategy at first sight. Cuddy was fierce grace. Her drop shot and forehand were the motion of educated eloquence. A synchrony was set between the brief intervals his eyes were closed to blink and her backhand. It was like nothing else in the world was going on, only the game, the challenge in front of her. She was confident and compelling. House wanted to steal that concentration, revel in it, have her focusing so intently, so passionately, so furiously on him (and simply _on_ him). She built her game around the counterattack, on flinging back the aggression of a netrusher. Ramming hard, deep, forceful returns was second nature to her. House would learn this soon and constantly in the years to come.

But she froze after the next serve. She saw him, standing and staring and analyzing every stroke. She knew who he was but had no idea what he was doing here. His reputation preceded his arrival and his unexpected appearance had her stumbling near to the net. She recovered though, volley without folly, until she regained her rhythm with the racquet.

Match point.

Cuddy grinned at her adversary, bouncing the ball, calm before crushing, an ominous sharp echo off the court. Then she stretched up, elongating her victorious frame, every extended muscle tautened with effort, and tossed it in the air.

It stayed there, hanging, poised above the void on a cloud of dreams, as if her sheer will to win defied gravity, physics, every truth he knew, leaving House in awe, his objectivity abandoned, standing lost and seeing nothing but the athletic display of strength, the all-consuming strive for success.

Then the weight returned and with more intensity than any move of the entire set, somehow outside of herself, Cuddy shot her serve across the net for the ace.

She won the match.

The game was over but another had just begun. She shook hands over the net and walked toward the fence at her opponent's side, sticky and smiling, nervous about the impression she left on her audience.

"Good game," said House to the space between the two players.

"You play?" Asked the loser.

House shook his head.

"Jason Serling," he introduced himself, reaching a hand out to be shook.

"Greg House," hands in his pockets, examining the winner, incapable of blinking as she dropped the racquet and picked up a bottle of water.

"House, I've heard that before," Jason said.

"Most people have, it's also a noun."

Cuddy smiled, watching them interact. Jason was gay, flamboyantly so, and House almost jealous, annoyed at least.

"This is–––" Jason started.

"Lisa," she said with the water bottle still to her lips.

"Cuddy," after a gulp.

House smirked a relieved smirk, relief resembling recognition, like he just diffused a bomb, solved a riddle, like he was right about something nobody else believed was possible. When she met his gaze and smiled triumphantly, the edges of his examination softened and his eyes brightened, sadly accentuating the distance between them.

The distance was time.

This was her beginning and his ending, infernal and inconsistent opposites attracting, magnetic and catastrophic. It would be years before her smile had meaning or his perspective any clear picture of the purpose. Now she was ahead, with so much before her and he stood seeing it all, struggling to stay on his feet, fighting against the gravity of chance and circumstance to not fall in love.

They met, one exuding endurance, grinning politely with a gleam in her eyes, azure as the sky and the other watching her wet lips, her hand and nails and the tennis ball in the middle, the object he will always associate with her.

Cuddy drank again, formulating a conversation worthy of a legend with her eyes closed. When she swallowed and spoke, he was gone.

Restless the rest of the night, House returned to his apartment and started composing an acoustic anthem about the tennis player. Still pagan at present, he found himself scribbling 'angelic' in the margins and writing almost romantic about the beautiful athlete named Lisa.

Cuddy was equally affected by the interest of her spectator. Warned about getting mixed up with the wrong boys, and prudent enough not to, she knew House was wrong for her, that he'd make her worse for wanting him. He was reckless, immature, emitting through every pore of his being a spirit of unconformity and moving with the cocky swagger of a rebellious maverick. He was dangerous and almost a doctor and she was fascinated as much afraid of tangling teleologies, or tongues.

_**let go**_

Born in Maine but earning his doctorate in Boston, Max had an unusual accent. It was vaguely French and deep when he contemplated between bullet points in lessons but nasal when they were alone, speaking personal, close. Cuddy loved listening to him. He was Max to her, not Doctor, or Hamilton and never Max_well_ and she liked the three letters, the informal address and giggled girlishly when he called her Lise with a broad A and within an observation full of non-rhoticity.

Soon, what had started as a crush or mutual and academic adoration became an affair. The looks they met conveyed a heated message and every word they spoke had some sensual subtext. Their fingers twined instead of brushing when he handed her a test and his hand resting on her shoulder caressed, light but hardly the platonic support of a proud prof.

There was the anxiety of what it meant, where it was going and not knowing. She wanted to stage her own romance, with the cliche candlelight and rose pedals and a gentle, brilliant lover, conquering the geography of her body, studying her anatomy. She wanted Max, yes. But she wanted House more, for the challenge, the accomplishment, the hope of meaning.

Weeks passed with Max and House fighting for autonomy as the fuel of her autoerotic fire. She'd been masturbating since the year she realized she wanted to be a doctor and had ways of improvising, despite the inconvenience of a roommate.

It was always House in her fantasies. The sheer unattainability of him made the man seem like a dream, only with wide shut eyes was he real to her.

Cuddy saw him on campus sometimes. He'd nod his head, raise his eyebrows if they met glances waiting from opposite ends of a line, or shoot her a wry grin that she knew was directed at her bosom. It was a thrill, just to be acknowledged by him and nice to know she occupied a space in his memory.

The energy House instigated she directed toward Max, gaining boldness, casually combing a few fingers through his hair as if to remove lint or gray or something marring his attractively erudite appearance. She could have approached House, he wasn't all brooding intimidation, she knew that even though she didn't know him yet. Cuddy thought she would one day, when the time was right, at least try and make the dream reality.

The day came, disguised as another.

It was a thoroughly miserable day. Her alarm clock didn't go off, she spilt coffee on her jeans, was late for her first two classes and now stained and struggling to make it to the third–––in the university hospital–––on time.

She did.

Relief was in sight, the day almost over, but her last class ended late that night.

Cuddy dragged her feet down the hall feeling anchored and exhausted, holding books and latex gloves. Famished, she turned the corner to stand and stare at the vending machine mirage. She punched her fists into her four empty pockets and sighed when she had no change. But her face lit up when she dug into her bag and discovered a dollar bill. Feeding the money into the machine, looking through the glass with sad starving eyes, she made the decision of which snack would be sustenance for the journey home.

Zagnut.

The dollar bill was sucked in only to be spit back out, so she tried again. And again. And Again. Convinced the machine was conspiring to make this the worst day of her life, she kicked it, cursed then turned around to see none other than the great Greg House hovering in the corner. Desperate for change, she hesitated, her lips parting slowly, salivating over the thought of something sweet, over the segway her words could be.

"House, do you––––?" She started, waving the dollar bill.

"No," he said cutting her off. He knew what she was doing, what she was going to do: the modest exertion of flirtation, an attempt.

"Do I know you?" He asked, in an almost hostile interrogative tone, following an awkward beat of analyzing her more closely.

"I... We met..."

He grimaced a glance of counterfeit unrecognition.

"Everybody here knows who you are," she finally answered, angry, disgusted; her empty stomach churning in a nauseating revolt. Did he really not remember?

"Yeah, well..." He almost hesitated.

"You shouldn't eat chocolate this late anyway, it'll go straight to your ass."

House wasn't being cruel. He was being kind, sparing her the burden of being his friend, the responsibility of being something more. He took a bite of his own candy bar and walked away without another word.

Cuddy bit her lip, bowed her head and fought tears. Filled with rage, fury, frustration, wondering why everything was out of reach–––––her future so distant, food mocking her behind glass, every specimen of the male anatomy she wanted but could never have, she didn't cry.

She paced. Down the hall, into another, the space was quiet, vacated but her mind was in anarchy, screaming, silenced only by another familiar face: Max.

"Lisa," he said, greeting her professionally.

Her name was the last thing she heard before Cuddy tilted her sullen expression and impulsively stood tiptoe, bringing her mouth to his. Her hands were behind his head, suppressing shock and their teeth scraped at the determined force of her face against his. Deliberate, provocative, it was the crest and crash of every emotion she refused to let escape any other way, the outlet for release she'd never known before.

It was an empty kiss, her dry mouth against his unsuspecting upper lip, her hands sliding down his shoulders, tongue darting into his mouth, pushing him up against a wall. A door, really. One of them turned the knob and they stumbled inside.

The on-call room was a closet, remodeled. It had two bunk beds and a cot. The filament of an old ceramic lamp flickered in the corner, threatening to burn out, and the overhead light already was. It was dark, warm confinement. They were trapped, tripping over each other's ankles in the square of floorspace between bed frames. If they weren't so concentrated on ignoring the atmosphere, they'd have seen the room was decorated with styrofoam cups and the week's newspapers.

One of Max's hands locked the door while the other was low on her back pushing her up and pivoting her hips into him, grinding until she sighed and twisted her leg, wrapping it around his, making him lose his footing. They fell to the cot.

Cuddy was on top of him, caught. Max held her tight, arching when a bedspring stabbed at the rigid spaces along his spine and plunging into her wet aimless kisses. She unbuttoned his shirt, painting his face with spit, undulating her hips and hoping that this was it.

Clung and clutching, they kissed. He skimmed her shirt off and unhooked her bra with graceless precision. It was moving fast, from one stage to the next with the tacit agreement of sharing and exploring, exploiting if necessary, the other's bodily geography signed and notarized and set into effect after that first kiss. The inevitable flashback offered not even a moment for second thoughts. She was exposed for the first time, vulnerable but not helpless, feeling the warmth of his mouth against her breast and his fingers tenaciously trembling at the button of her jeans. The coffee stained crotch filled the room with the scent of caffeine and she shifted, almost stood to take the denim off.

Max imitated her ineloquent striptease and tossed his clothes aside. She glimpsed his circumcised shadow and saw that he was hung well. The sight was intimidating, girth discouraging. Stories streamed though her consciousness and she thought of crimson on white sheets and the pain that might eclipse pleasure. But when he laid her down she neither resisted nor assisted and soon Max was positioned above her, sucking and kissing and nuzzling her neck.

There was something intoxicating about the anticipation, the visceral, chemical reaction her body sought. The lumbering weight of him felt good, being close and held, wanted and remembered. Suddenly she felt hollow and knew she was craving something more than candy, she wanted to come and to make him come. She wanted him inside her and she wanted everything _now, _before she could rationalize how wrong it was_._

Her teeth sunk into his shoulder and her arms formed a tense ring around his back.

Max was rubbing himself against her, lubricating and teasing and the suspense was agony. Cuddy held her breath until she was dizzy, near passing out. Then her hands descended, pulling on a sheet, letting her palms curve around the outskirts of each cheek, she pushed.

The slight pain and resistance on penetration put an end to years of speculation.

It felt good. There was no revelatory amazement but it wasn't an abominable transition either. She felt accomplished, making her prof her first. She felt full, as he eased in another inch.

Max choked on a strangled noise in his throat; she was so tight. He looked in her eyes for the first time that night, seeing sapphire innocence and had his own revelation. She was a virgin. Past tense, almost. He stopped, but then her stare shifted, it changed. She wanted this. She wanted him and that was enough.

He thrust slowly a few more times, smooth and sticky then closed his eyes and kissed her softly. Cuddy felt redeemed for her irrational impulse and she was beginning to feel something more, like feral waves crashing to the shore.

Max pulled out.

She panicked when he sprung off of the bed, terrified she'd been rejected, that she'd done something wrong. Then she squinted and saw he was frantically fumbling for his pants, searching for his wallet. Max returned with a condom, tore it open with a savage sonorous rip and carefully rolled it on.

With a thin layer of latex between them, they reconnected. He crept deeper with each languorous lunge. Max made love the same way he taught, with conviction and confidence and only part time. It was tantalizing to a degree, but on the annoying side of aggravation after a while. The shallow, distracted motion seemed considerate at first, until she realized it was simply his unarousing style.

Making love or having sex, humping in a hospital; Max was less interesting without clothes on. Pale and pudgy in some places, braced on his arms she imagined leather patches over the elbows like on his suit jacket, and wanted to laugh at him and slap him and fuck him harder.

A soft mewling whimper slipped past her lips. It was a paradox, the pain and pleasure, cringing in enthusiasm. Max moaned and started to hurry his hips. Heaving thrusts had his testicles slapping against her, the sound a strange refrain in their carnal rhythm. Cuddy kissed him once and bit the lobe of his ear, goading him to drive faster, wanting more than anything for this to not be just another anatomy lesson. He complied, bucking into her and then the prospect of release, escape, everything was in sight. Orgasm approached, like a slow assassination tide. Max murmured her name and she wrapped her legs around his waist, forcing him closer, pulling on his hair and whispering in his ear something lewd the Lisa of an hour earlier would never have said.

It was still lie to think she was hungry for him and not House.

Looking in his eyes, searching for an answer, Cuddy was trying to make an allusive connection but there wasn't one. His irises were a jaded green, pupils dilated, glazed over with lust. Max was looking at her but not seeing her. Her hips lifted until she was colliding into him, numb to the pain now. Writhing and sweating and shifting, he was there; precise, pulsing, throbbing and thrumming against that anatomical apex. And even suffused by approximate pleasure, she had the epiphany that the whole act was procedural, textbook, educational but not exceptional. In an attempt to archive the observation, she started touching herself, circling where their bodies met. Max grunted and jutted quicker until every muscle in his body tensed and strained and they were just panting, tautened, tangled stillness. He closed his eyes and came.

Cuddy wanted to scream. She wanted to come. She wanted to stop. The man climaxing and refusing to see her was intolerable, more offensive than anything House said, more disappointing than House not remembering. She wanted love, even if she had to make it, manifest it from impossible scratch. She wanted a man who looked her in the eyes when he came, who couldn't bear to blink because he was so concentrated on her. She wanted a man who came _with_ her, not before her and eye contact as much as skin and membrane and sweat and secretions. Cuddy wanted a connection that meant something, never this.

Thrashing beneath his heavier hinderance, her head swung from side to side, her hands fisted, trying to resist release. But feeling the hot stream rush into the condom was too much and resisted, deprived, constrained for so long, the ecstasy lingered all the more, flowing through her veins like a shot of morphine. In a shuddering spasm and sharp sigh, she let go. She embraced the meaninglessness.

She gave up.

A girl fell asleep, a student who had lost or sacrificed something, not through the physical exchange but in the absolute resignation of hope–––––for love and for House.

Cuddy awoke a woman, in a doctor's world and alone.

There were a few doctors, two residents and an attending, all three asleep. Max was gone though, having left nothing but a bad taste in her mouth. She buried herself under the blanket, trying to hide in a panic. The room was dark and she knew that although an anomaly, she'd gone unnoticed with her identity imperceptible under the sheets. She dressed quickly in the unquiet room that she didn't belong and shuffled out questioning the reality of all recent events.

She was sore, undoubtedly, and aching from drowsing off on the uncomfortable cot. There was no regret yet and the walk of shame was more a wondering wandering.

Fear was creeping close behind, stalking confusion. Beyond both came a disconcerting uncertainty of what happens next and she wriggled down the hall, not even knowing if her underwear were on backwards or not.

The cold gray dawn would fade into another ordinary day and when she made it home, Cuddy decided nothing had changed. She undressed and showered, not especially assured by what she was feeling. The want was still there, House in the back of her head. Insignificant spontaneous sex assuaged some of the angst.

But she was still seeing him––––– taunting and tempting, flaunting what she could never have. A part of her wanted to lay down and give herself to him and another part just wanted to climb on top of him and take what she wanted. She still wanted House in spite of the attempt to fill his space with some else. He didn't want her, didn't even remember her; she wanted him even though she had no reason to want him.

_**observation room**_

Four days after the coital contradiction that was the loss of her virginity, Cuddy had class with Max. She arrived early and enjoyed the lecture. He didn't ignore her and their proximity wasn't awkward either. It was aftermath without guilt, and little regret. When class was over, Cuddy lingered. People huddled around the professor, asking questions, brief, except for one. It was a woman, his age with auburn hair and crow's feet, she didn't look like a student.

She wasn't.

Cuddy stood beside a classmate waiting to ask him a question about an assignment and watched as the woman touched his arm, kissed him goodbye and left. Her identity was a simple deduction, but the obvious was asked anyway.

"Who is that?" Cuddy whispered to the other student waiting as the woman walked away, afraid of the answer.

"His wife."

Max answered the answerer's question and Cuddy improvised her own inquiry and watched Max leave. She wasn't heartbroken. She never loved him but was still shocked. Sad, even. There was dismay in her surprise and she felt incredibly stupid for never suspecting.

Alone now in a dim classroom where the sound and world seemed only fading static at a distance, Cuddy sat. She felt disgusted, misled, betrayed. It was a strange sinking feeling and she sat still, pen poised between her fingers, tears building behind eyelids, a scream stuck in her throat; remembering the meaningless night, the triumph and maturity and accomplishment. She sat still, as if she were sinking in quicksand and moving would accelerate her demise, as if mud and clay and silt would soon rush into her lung. The relentless grip of an invisible force was pulling down on her, strangling her ankles and it hurt too much to resist–––– the complete absence of levity, buoyancy, air. She sunk, scared and sick.

Noise quelled in the hallways and her personal chaos escalated to all-consuming. There was tremendous guilt now. Unwitting adultery was a sin more than an ethical lapse, more than the impulsive casual liaison between professor and pupil that she thought she'd initiated.

Footsteps faded as everybody settled into their next class. Finally, Cuddy let herself cry. Not because she was angry or sad but because she was crying in a classroom, sinking in stillness, weak, discouraged, utterly immobile. Crying at the fact she was crying, she was flooded with bitter regret.

After about three minutes of self pity she opened a book and read. She wrote and studied and stayed there another hour. Somebody would find her soon or another class would convene in this room but she stayed, trying to not let the cataclysm affect her passion for her work. Determined,with gritted teeth, to not confront and punch Max, or to let the mistake mean anything.

Soon she saw the shadow of somebody standing behind her, peering over a shoulder as if to copy an answer to a test neither of them was taking.

"Pathologic Mechanisms of Endocrine Disease," he read aloud.

She closed the book, so he analyzed her notes, close enough that she could lean on him. Instead she disguised a sob by shouting his surname, trying not to sniffle on the exhale.

Cuddy was hurt, he could see. Earlier that week, he heard what happened. Extracurricular affairs weren't rare, or news, or relevant. Everybody knew but nobody cared, except him. Somehow she suspected he was more curious than concerned, that he had an ulterior motive for being here. A heavy beat passed between them, their mirrored muteness and indolence reflecting mutual doubt.

"Small class," he said with a straight face. His tone was glib, a little amused, trying to make her smile. There was the whim to elaborate his sarcasm but he suppressed it and added only:

"Bell curve must be a bitch."

In a depressed glance, she looked at him and he saw her eyes welling with tears were emeralds, bloodshot red, sincerity that was supposed to be sapphire. That day they were different. He wanted to bring the blue back.

It was guilt. If he hadn't so thoughtfully rejected her a few days before, she wouldn't have done something as illogical as sleeping with a married man. It was love, the idea of a connection, the hope that them meeting wasn't random and meaningless. He wanted to be here, he wanted to help her. The impulse to be a shoulder for a sad girl to lean on was how the disease presented, but he stood quiet and waiting, refusing to diagnose himself.

"Leave me alone, House," she said closing her eyes.

And he did. She opened her eyes and saw a candy bar in the middle of the book.

The word made her smile, almost. The orange and yellow were an attempt, an apology.

Zagnut.

_**interlude**_

During the gap in her collegiate timeline between Max and something more, Cuddy changed. She moved into an apartment, alone. Her parents helped finance the luxury knowing she had suffered some indignant embarrassment but not knowing to what degree. She dropped Max's class and thought about House constantly.

She joined a sorority.

Delta Sigma Theta was where she earned the nickname Partypants.  
It was not an entirely uninspired pledge moniker.

Partypants wasn't promiscuous per se. She was pandering. She tackled a Wolverine linebacker, brushstroked an art history major and tested the faith (while stealing the celibacy) of a comparative religion senior. Her sexual exploits were an attempt to get as far away from science as possible, with men as unlike Max as possible. Trysts were brief, sometimes she'd see a repeat, but most were only one night stands. She was segregating sex and love, painfully aware of how one was the sun: hot and oppressive and always in the sky and the other was a shooting star, isolated, rare, impossible, lucky to be experienced once in a lifetime

It was denial as much as acceptance, that she may never fall in love. The carnal complications she kept simple, trying to erase the blemish of Max, forget everything and make it mean nothing. But when she was alone she remembered; she had commenced her sexual history with a blunder

Ashamed and angry at herself for making the mistake, Cuddy questioned if she could still do this, if she even wanted to try to be the best anymore. As her self esteem reached its boiling point and evaporated, her grades suffered. She wasn't failing. She'd finish her undergrad years Alpha Cum Lade and graduate medical school second in her class. Still, she was only a sophomore. No fate was sealed yet.

She was slipping.

House saw it. He wanted to catch her, to help her somehow. He felt responsible for saving her as if he knew there'd be a day when she'd be responsible for saving him. This clairvoyant reciprocity would ultimately decide their collegiate destiny and, in doing so, the rest of their lives.

-

House never stopped paying attention. He knew when she moved and added her block to his running route. Late one November day, he was sprinting voyeuristically. Vigilantly. His shins were splitting, his heels against the pavement were slick and the vapor cloud of his breath was a finish line in front of his eyes, disappearing with every step. The cold air in his lungs was revitalizing and the frost biting his fisted fingers was motivation to move faster. It was a colorless dusk, no sun in sight, no headlights even, down this street. House slowed as he neared her apartment. He hunched over, hands on knees and pretended to count off his pulse. Really, he was looking up toward the room he'd deduced was hers, feeling less like Romeo outside her window, and more like Prefontaine, beaten and about to collide with a car. He quickstepped onto the curb and shifted his glance.

Cuddy was outside, sitting on the fire escape, letting her legs dangle through the black metal bars. She seemed like a prisoner, her searching stare begging the horizon for forgiveness and frozen tears streaming down her face.

House intuitively knew that she wasn't crying about Max. He knew she never cried about Max. She wasn't crying over a C or a D on an exam either. He knew why she was crying. The culmination of defeat and despair: she'd lost her passion for her work, she was hopeless and homesick and he knew what he had to do.

-

Days later, Cuddy was strolling down the hall of the university hospital, lost in thought, wondering if the promise of a life with a purpose had already been broken. She was shadowing that day and experienced no thrill in watching doctors chart or assisting one in Geriatrics. She had class at the other end of campus in ten minutes and was less enthusiastic about that than other people's old age. Sedately sighing at the thought, five fingers suddenly wrapped around her wrist. She looked up to see it was House. He took her by the hand and walked quickly, jerking her arm.

"House? What are you doing?" She asked with surprised drowsy anxiety.

He kept tugging, running now and didn't answer.

"House! I'm going to be late for class."

"No. You're going to _miss_ class."

"What? Where are you taking me?"

Cuddy wasn't being dragged so much as led. She trusted him as they strode through the sinuous stretch of corridors. Down stairs, on an elevator, to a door. It was a surgery observation room. Cuddy hesitated but he pulled her inside. She was about to protest when he let go of her hand. Her eyes panned across the room, looked down and through the glass to see surgeons and nurses preparing and stepped back quickly, afraid someone saw her.

"I'm not supposed to be here."

"Neither am I," he said without looking at her.

Her dropped jaw closed, exasperated, she rolled her eyes and turned to leave.

"Lise," his voice was panic, irrational, almost an emotion. He took her hand again and their fingers inadvertently twined in the first act of accidental intimacy, echoing an unrequited future.

"Stay."

The word was soft, not a command or a plea. It was an invitation, one she couldn't refuse (from the man she could never resist.)

Cuddy returned to his side and watched through the window seeing silver scalpels and surgery a few meters away. His hand was cold in hers and he let go before she could warm it.

Forceps and clamps, retractors and scopes, she liked the sight of surgery.

She was learning.

"Is this a prophylactic thyroidectomy?"

"Yes. A plus for pronunciation."

Engrossed in the unexpected opportunity of what she was witnessing, Cuddy watched a while longer. When the surgeon started suturing, she turned to House.

"Why did you bring me here?"

He shrugged.

"Don't you have anything better to do than kidnap academically anesthetized undergrads?"

He shook his head.

"My rotation is less interesting."

'Than this', he almost said, but didn't afraid it would come out 'than you.'

"We were both bored."

A smile curled above his chin and when she saw dimples she couldn't help but imagine him as a little boy. In scrubs his legs were longer, and just a hint of hair on his chest was blonde at the bottom of the open V. Cuddy didn't mind her company.

"Now we're not."

So she was his escape as much as he was hers, she beamed with the epiphany.

"There's an oophorectomy in here Monday," he said.

And from an educational abduction and a few words, their friendship was conceived.

House continued kidnapping her. Cuddy was a content captive. She liked abdicating control, regaining confidence, holding his hand. Oxytocin made it calm and memories made it safe, clinically and effectively restoring her interest and passion and hope.

They stole space in the surgery observation room when House knew nobody was in it, and sometimes even when it was crowded. Donning labcoats and hanging a stethoscope around the pretty undergrad's neck they impersonated the doctors they soon would be.

There was the expository irresolution of motivation, and more: what they were becoming to each other. A while passed before they made any overtures about the uncertainty. Cuddy dated somebody during his stint as mentor. House infringed, sabotaging their dates, showing up with books and beer when she was left alone. It was his attempt to court her, his possessive protective selfishness. He wanted her for himself and yet felt it necessary to remain indifferent and never hint, let alone confess his interest.

It was pride and self preservation. But it was also a narrow vision of time, a perspective skewed by what they could have been (and what they still could be.) House wished he knew her when they were younger. He felt they'd already lost too much time, not meeting until Ann Arbor. He wished he could have been the touchdown scoring quarterback and her the cheerleader shouting his name on the sidelines. He wished she was his first and that he was someone else.

In her presence he perpetually waxed nostalgic, for the future as much as the past. She was his youth, the start of a new stage, healing the wounds of his yesterday.

-

Approached with lulling indirection, each moment they spent together held the germ of innumerable possibilities. House thought of them as Daphnis and Chloe in another life, connected as children.  
Or Cuddy his platonic protege––––– Boccaccio to his Petrarch. But really she was his Laura. Instead of sonnets he wrote song after song, strumming the strings of guitar, contemplating how, when and if he could seduce her.

They met and loitered in Shapiro Library and House shared his wisdom and insights into the human condition.

"Patients aren't people," was one of the first truths he professed.

"They're puzzles."

Objectivity was emphasized above all else and he was learning himself, from this girl, his new best friend. Eventually, being an infamous alchemist of vice, House was permanently expelled from the library (or so he told her) and they began meeting at his place.

One eventful night, or early morning, they were awake in his apartment, memorizing medicine and making coffee. Cuddy took hers black and carrying it back spilled the entire cup on herself. The shirt was soaked and she gasped, cursing at the scolding heat of it.

"The caffeine delivery system works better if you drink it, but I suppose skin absorption could be _Doctor_ Cuddy's first breakthrough."

He stood and without looking at her walked into the kitchen.

"Take it off," he said on his way.

"What? No!"

House returned with a washcloth and ice. He lifted her shirt to see a large red blotch, a burn.

"Take it off," he said again, touching the cold cloth to her skin.

Reluctantly, Cuddy lifted her top off and tossed the steaming shirt aside. He squatted to look more closely at her stomach. Fighting desperately to not nuzzle his nose into her cleavage, dart a finger into her belly button or kiss her flat abdomen, he pressed the ice to the burn and she stared at the top of his head, wondering if this was going anywhere. Then she slanted a little, awkward in her bra and with his hands and breath spreading over her.

House blinked, standing straight, handed her the ice then walked into his bedroom. She was confused, uncertain if this was how stained sex would ensue.

"Here," he said upon returning, throwing a tshirt at her.

It was his JHU tshirt. She put it on and he struggled not to notice how the blue brought out her eyes. Cuddy was comfortable in the cotton and after a brief consideration, reached over and kissed him on the cheek, her hand on his thigh accidentally moving a little higher.

"Just because I gave you my tshirt doesn't mean I want to father your child," he said sarcastically, expecting to be pinched or punched.

"I don't want kids," she said yawning, as if she didn't just reveal something significant.

"Ever?"

She shook her head.

"You'll change your mind."

House was right. Unaware, she closed her eyes and yawned again and with his arm behind but not around her, he craned his neck to kiss her forehead but stopped himself before _he_ revealed something. Cuddy sat close beside him the rest of the night and fell asleep three hours before her first class with her knees bent under the shirt and her body leaning into his.

Watching her wear his past, House first had the thought that maybe they're the same, that that's the attraction. He was full of himself, and wanted her to be just as full of him. It was sexual because she was sexy but there was an intuitive premonition of their potential. Something cerebral, something chemical, chemistry itself.

His bravado rarely yielded but with her he censored his scornful derision. There were no remarks made about the mistake of Max and he never called her Partypants to her face. It wasn't that he was being wholesome or humble or considerate. He backwashed into her bottle when his was empty and always ate the last piece of pizza without asking. Still, Cuddy had a sense of him altering his behavior around her. She thought of asking 'Do you like me House?' or assuming he did and simply asking 'Why?'

When she woke he was drooling onto the top of her head, washing her hair in hops scented saliva and holding her hand. The calloused tips of his fingers she suspected were from playing guitar but had no idea that she was the subject of so many of his songs. In the end he'd never play for her, out of the fear of repeating the cataclysmic loss of his last serenade.

Cuddy went to class with a stiff neck and on only three hours of sleep, aced an exam. Academically, her GPA soared. She was exceptional again, she would be the best. Funny, Cuddy thought, how it all worked out after she'd given up on it. Her love for science returned full force but it wasn't her only obsession anymore.

All her eagerness for life hung by a thread: his voice. It was a constant, whining and coaxing, sometimes encouraging. Its rhythm and cadence, the rising and falling inflection, strutting and posturing, pecking and chirping––––the abrasive cocky tenor was always correcting her with just a hint of condescension, almost educating.

She could hear his ungrateful acceptance speech when he won a Nobel prize and wondered if she would play any role in his accomplishments, if they were, even distantly or indirectly, in each other's days ahead.

_**winter dreams**_

Winter break was an unwanted interim. They spent it separate and sulking. Cuddy stayed with her family and House stayed homeless. They missed each other but never called. They thought about each other but never wrote, spoke _of_ each other but not _to_ each other.

As the festival of lights and dull vacation progressed, Cuddy dreamed about him––––the brash, brilliant, Byronic boy, her tutor and friend, doomed for greatness, destined to always be an outsider, doubted, resisted, right. She believed in him knowing nobody else did and dreamed that their affair in academia was his faith in her, substantiated, unspoken. She dreamed of marrying him.

It was a long, deep, reoccurring dream with a shotgun wedding and hastily signed nuptials–––––a honeymoon in Michigan––––––and them together, making love and meaning it. Waking tangled in hotel sheets and knowing that every day with him would be the first day of the rest of her life, it was an impossible dream about the incorrigible manipulative man she idolized, who she never called Greg, who she loved absolutely and unconditionally. He was a common kind of man, refusing to let go of the little boy, making authentic self disclosure a rare unrealistic hope, disguised in immaturity.

Each morning she'd wake and in the first glimmer of consciousness, expected a ring to be on her finger. Later she'd study and come across one of his scribbled notes in the margins. It was proposal enough.

-

House dreamt alone on the other side of the state. At night he tried to think of anything else––––football, where he'd be matched for his residency, cold war and cold showers––––but she occupied his entire subconscious. When the walls started to crack in his apartment, House snuck into hers (he knew where she hid the spare key) and investigated. He'd go through her drawers and find exams, seeing how her grades had improved. He found her vibrator and diary and some nights would take a bath in her tub and read it. Cuddy wrote about him so affectionately, so hopefully that her scrawled accounts of their time together almost affected him.

Almost.

When he found a loose tennis ball, he bounced it for hours, not caring about aggravating the neighbors beneath her. If she got evicted, she could come stay with him. House was immersing himself in her world without her knowing. And in doing so realized, however unintentionally, that he wanted to be a part of it.

He'd lay in her bed, spread eagle on down and smell the pillows, but could never sleep there. Several times he dozed off on the couch and had an epiphany, one it would take him more than twenty years to understand.

He dreamed.

At the time it was undoubtedly a nightmare. Cuddy was with him. She was glowing, she was round.

She was pregnant.

He dreamed of her bare feet and swollen ankles, of her belly protruding from its tiny frame and his hand on it, feeling the parasite inside her kicking its way through her ribs. Paralyzed in fear, he fell back and the repetition of falling, of hitting the hardwood floor, seemed more like a memory than dream.

House woke before any other details were divulged or any explanation given. He rationalized the strange nocturnal musing, telling himself that he just wanted her that badly, even in his sleep; that it was a side effect of all the wet dreams he'd had about her. He admitted missing her Reeboks and argyle sweaters and recognized from the warning that he wanted to peel her out of both and the consequences of doing so without a condom.

He also considered it a sign that they should never have sex. Analyzing, interpreting and misinterpreting, he'd always been petrified about getting a girl pregnant and knew that the worst case scenario would ruin them both.

Except it wasn't so simple as that, either. As so frequently would be the case in the more recent days of reminiscence, House was unconsciously dictated to by his winter dreams.

_**tirade**_

Reunion was relief.

The start of a new year and new semester and them together was convenient coincidence. The first part of the week was a rush but they met by the end and resumed their unrequited routine.

It was an ordinary evening, with books in their laps and beer on the coffee table. They belonged like that, with each other and to each other. The TV was a flickering drone and a long silence stood between them.

The nameless bliss of proximity had an inexplicable smile filling his face. Cuddy had bought him a reuben at the local deli and he was still holding it, the cabbage and mustard a soggy stack on the plate. He put the sandwich down and continued with the drill.

"A tumor in the adrenal zona glomerulosa may cause hypersecretion of the hormones in that region. What would––––––?"

"Increased blood sodium levels."

"Bitchin. Oxytocin is secreted by the––––?"

" Neurohypophysis."

"Your specialty will be–––––?"

"Endocrinology." A beat.

"I know," he said grinning at the quick sequential way he manipulated a personal revelation.

"I don't think that will be on the test."

"No. But it's the most important question."

He took another bite of his sandwich.

"Besides 'Where's the beef?'"

Cuddy giggled, a sound of self assurance. What he said wasn't that funny and House knew she wasn't laughing at the joke. She was smiling and happy because of what he helped her discover, the latency of her potential and their love. Her laugh was a modest vow of salvation and he knew, he had wanted Lisa Cuddy ever since he was a proud, prodigal piano playing little boy.

It was as if a fog had lifted. The clarity of the moment demanded a confession.

"I should go," House said afraid of what he was feeling.

He stood and started for the door. Cuddy watched, confused why he was leaving so abruptly. She looked and saw he'd forgotten a book and took it over to him.

"House," handing him the heavy text.

And it was facing him, so close, the possibility, the light of this new landscape waking his soul from cynicism and contempt.

There was a pause. Then she smiled and the corners of her mouth drooped and an almost imperceptible sway brought her closer to him, looking up into his eyes. A lump rose in House's throat, and he waited patiently for the experiment, facing the unpredictable compound that would form mysteriously from the elements of their lips. Then he saw––––she conveyed her need for this, her eyes told him he had no choice.

He kissed her.

The kiss was beauty, captured or recaptured. It was the spark which flares up when two ages meet across a distance of years. It was a clean sweep of chronology, a tirade against time.

His arms were barely around her, they stood motionless except for their mouths, both suspecting time had stopped. It was defiance, this kiss refuting physics, negating logic, it was hope in a warm breath, without a word.

Cuddy's entire body felt him but only their lips and tips of fingers were touching.

She had one hand behind his head and the other on his arm and he kept kissing her with the precision and perfection he'd soon diagnose with. House's lips were chapped and rough but his mouth was wet and warm, moving with something resembling reluctance against her own.

A compromise, with closed eyes, her tongue slipped past his lips and his mouth opened wider giving her his. Before he pulled back, House's thumb stroked her cheek and he opened his eyes to see the circumstance, advent as much as accident.

Breathless, she tilted her head when he relented and saw him the same. He was analyzing her, measuring, weighing, evaluating and deducing, so intently that she couldn't move, so tenderly and his stare so blue.

"Goodnight," he said, wavering at the temptation to continue.

With the softly spoken syllables, his eyes revealed something, something she couldn't name, something she'd never known but he kissed her again before she could think about it, confront or question what any of it meant.

It was urgency, desperate and wanton. He tried to stop again, to breathe but she held him close. Cuddy was kissing _him_ now, a kiss that said take me, that screamed finally–––– I want you, here, now and for rest of my life.

This kiss was a prelude to more, lovemaking and the whole meaningless mess. House knew. At the border between opportunity and error, he was about to make the right choice. He couldn't kill the beautiful dream by making it reality.

Not tonight.

He broke the kiss, held his breath through the beat and walked away.

"Goodnight," Cuddy whispered to the door as it closed, uncertain why it didn't feel incomplete.

-

Addictive was each other's company after that night. Love was born—––by way of long conversations at night into those stark hours when the mind thins and sharpens and the borrowings from day dreams become as real as life, when the future was theirs, visible, attainable, in front of their eyes. They kissed constantly, kisses that weren't just a resonant communion but a fulfillment. A completion that aroused in him not hunger demanding renewal but a craving hinged on yearning, kisses that were like charity, creating want by holding back nothing at all.

A year had passed fast but the days were slow, days that she made him smile and nights when they smiled together. Cuddy tried to find a word to describe that joy, the sincere smirk of a cynic, the look on his face that she thought only she had ever seen. Ironic, she decided, and his piercing eyes became quite gentle in the yellow lamp light. She liked him because he was arrogant without being conceited, and loved him because what they had was an overwhelming almost romantically absurd blind faith. His love was a promise, without a guarantee; the danger of hurting and getting hurt.

Writhing between faith and doubt, Cuddy agreed with his opinions, praised his carelessness and admired his charming irresponsibility. She heard herself apostrophized as "House's hot undergrad" and everybody who noticed the almost inseparable pair assumed they were sleeping together.

In the literal sense, they had fallen asleep together countless times. But that was little comfort because in the post coital sated slumber sense, she didn't understand why they hadn't yet, or know if they ever would.

They kissed, so many inconsequential kisses but she wanted more. A relationship: heartache, dysfunction, fear––––all of the glorious and dreadful things that render life interesting.

She wanted House to be hers, only hers, to fill and feel her, to whisper or grunt or shout the three syllables she waited her whole life to hear. Lust with House would be love in some contradictory otherwise irreconcilable way.

For House though, fidelity was fiction.

-

Jagger the philosopher was singing about far away eyes.

House was in her apartment, listening to the radio. He knew then, Lisa Cuddy wasn't just somegirl. She was _the_ girl. But it was hopeless that she could ever be his.

He was searching for something in her desk, the huge rectangle of mahogany, bigger than her bed and almost as big as her bedroom. It was the coming-of-age, coming-to-college gift from her family and he knew she loved it. She belonged behind it and he had the guilty pleasure of watching her work there, of imaging his impatient hand pushing the papers and pens and picture frames off and them making love on it until it they had splinters.

The motifs of the room were pink and cream and, still searching, House had the a stream of consciousness aside that those would be the colors of her wedding. He shook off the strange thought but was dejected by it anyway, always instigating his own despair, knowing he would never marry her, knowing he could never marry anyone.

Then he found it.

Cuddy had taken a photography class as an elective. She spent most of the semester smelling like darkroom chemicals and squinting under a safelight. House's objectivity was irreconcilable with art at that point but the contrast of black and white reminded him of the super-8 projector, the celluloid aesthetic and distant days of his youth.

He was never a model or subject for Cuddy's camera because he was never asked but House took pictures of _her_ sometimes, sleeping or studying; images of herself she didn't see until she developed them, destined to only ever experience his love when she was alone in the dark.

The negative read Ilford at the top and he held it up to the light. Six consecutive shots of Lisa, moments when she looked unguarded and innocent, exhausted.

Was it curiosity or concern? Were the pictures proof or prophecy?

She'd print them and see, constantly trying to understand the man through the lens of an enlarger, perpetually attempting to examine herself through his eyes.

Now he just put them in plastic, not wanting to scratch even the edge of an exposure, lest it mar the broader exposure of the girl he'd fallen for. They were young, he told himself, it was chemical, pheromones and hormones, horniness––––anything but love.

_**matched**_

The Match, as last year med students called it, was a competitive process. It was between Stanford (nephrology) and Hopkins (infectious disease) for House's residency. And Hopkins accepted him. This time he didn't cheat but was still surprised he'd be returning East. He'd entered the Match at the start of the academic year and now March was over, May close. Both interviews went miserably and he was almost hoping neither wanted him, so that in the scramble, he might stay here a little longer.

Hopkins' policy for readmitting a dismissed student fell in his favor. Somebody on the committee liked him. House considered celebrating the day he found out but couldn't stand to tell her he'd be leaving soon. Cuddy assumed he'd do his residency here, that he was only in Michigan in the first place because nobody else wanted him.

It'd be a crippling blow he could do nothing about, he couldn't break her heart. He decided to tell her the night of graduation; he was leaving and not coming back. Till the next time we say goodbye, he heard the voice on the record say before he lifted the needle.

If there ever is a next time.

-

April showers were ceaseless. The end of the month saw the place dry and thaw and only then did it feel like winter had ended. With relief though, came impending departure. There was so much they never did together, so much they could never do.

House felt like he was rowing against the current, time was an obstacle, a restraint and diminishing every day that the flood waters rose. He made the most of their time. Everybody expires eventually, he would leave a legacy but _they_ would be his legend. It was easy to ignore everything else, to walk with his arm around her through campus at night, the beautiful brevity of twilight, toward something more. They had learned over the last years, coming together in a curious education, realizing in the most subliminal way that the present doesn't just impact the future, it's not a precursor, an arbitrary influence.

It integrates.

The present _is_ the future––––the future fading into the past until time itself _dis_integrates. Each moment is fleeting and forgettable and memory the only evidence that time exists

Home was his apartment, if she was in it. The days were polarized; there were moments of pith and moments of pathos. House's conscience seesawed between saying his secret and staying. Irresolutely conflicted, he resolved to make it up to her somehow. He contemplated a while and after a few cunnilingus centered situations thought of something slightly less devious but just as fun.

Cuddy regained her interest in science and school but hadn't played tennis in a while. He wanted her whole again. He wanted her happy. They met one night at the beginning of the month. After the fifth beer he kissed her and between laughter and bantering caresses and a half stifled flare of pent up physical potential, they passed an hour.

"We should play," said House, savoring the flavor of her mouth on his.

"What?"

"Tennis. We should play a set someday."

She giggled, incredulously. He must really be drunk.

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yeah, why not? Afraid I'll break that candy ass of yours by kicking it so hard?"

"Fine," she said confidently and kissed him again, with no idea that this was

the end.

"Tomorrow."

-

Greg House can yo-yo. He can golf, row, bowl, swim and run. He can play lacrosse, poker, Eddie Van Halen's two fingered arpeggio; he can even play dead.

But he cannot play tennis.

Outside the court, he stood and plucked a blade of grass so that he could nibble on it scientifically. And brood. The memory this place espoused was vivid. The first time he saw her felt like yesterday. It still does.

Lilacs and dandelions colored the canvas of this portrait he'd waited so long to paint. Winter had waned and this was the culmination of lengthening days, a time of growth, renewal and new life. The sky was blue and white with gray clouds drifting away from robins and swallows.

It was spring.

Cuddy served, casually. Break point after break point, House ricocheted the ball at best and it was all aces and service wins for his younger female rival. When he only managed to return the ball twice after a few pathetic plays, Cuddy walked over to his side of the net.

Behind him, she stood and started to lecture about forehand technique, putting her hand over his and demonstrating a continental grip.

"Load your body weight on your right foot," she instructed.

"And coil your shoulders like this," she added, contorting like a pro.

He obeyed. They aligned arms, hers damp at the joint of his elbow and she moved with him as he uncoiled his body; beginning with his legs, progressing to his hips and then onto his arms, utilizing the open stance she showed him.

Cuddy was trying to teach him, but he just wanted to play with her. Even if he were more proficient, he would have let her lecture, he would have let her win. In the middle of the thought, she called him Greg and asked if he understood.

They went through the motion again and it was covertly sexual, intoxicating intimacy out in the open. Summer's close, he thought, someday he'll have to teach her to golf.

Gray clouds grew, an ominous threat of downpour but there was still enough sun to trace shadows when House stooped to pant, rubbing his wrist, wondering if he sprained it. There was pleasure in the pain, the way there always would be with her.

Drenched and incapable of drying in the humidity, he procrastinated another point by taking his shirt off. It was a pastel polo he'd undoubtedly stolen from a rich clueless freshman, or a friend, if he had any, and now House was just lean dripping muscle in too tight shorts on a tennis court.

They played some more and heeding her advice, he improved. He started receiving and returning and she even let him score a few times. It was a distraction, the half naked hubris named House. His pectorals, biceps and abdominals, stressed and glistening offered her a new understanding of anatomy. Even his legs were amazing; his calves and quadriceps, the muscle between his thighs. She'd caught a glimpse of it once, when she was showering and he was peeing on her toilet seat. But now she had a better view, it wasn't a flaccid bulge, he was hard.

Corpora cavernosa, for her.

It broke her concentration and she stopped, pretending to catch her breath. When she wiped her forehead she realized it wasn't just sweat. It had started to rain.

They laughed together under the cool drizzle. The clash and strain continued, the match that meant something. The water was washing away doubt and he watched her, not with the same cynical gaze as before but knowing that this was it. It would end the same way it began. It had all been a game he could never win. No longer the narcissistic nihilist, he saw her and believed in her, if nothing else, if just for now.

A trickle became a shower and a shower a storm. They played through the deluge until the fluorescent green fuzz of the ball weighed it down too much to bounce.

A roll of thunder made Cuddy miss and she ran toward the net, to him for protection. Safe, she saw a prismatic arch, in his arms; a rainbow in the sky. Theirs.

Reborn by the rainstorm, moved by the colors they were certain only they could see, they almost appreciated the evanescent aesthetic of mother nature.

-

The moment they made it through the door he kissed her, tasting honeysuckle and spearmint and spring rain. Cuddy's hair was sleek clinging to a cheek and they wavered sheened in sweat and water. The shadow of her areola caught his gaze, pink under the white fabric of her wet tank top. Her palm couldn't help but rest against his muscular chest and he pulled her to him, pulled her _in_to him.

Sweating into each other's skin, they started making love there, on a threshold, ready to let go. House kissed her forehead, her nose, her temple as he pushed a damp errant strand of ebony away from her face. He kissed her lips with their stares fixed, he looked her in the eyes and she felt helpless. Cherished.

This is it, Cuddy thought. The single great love on which she would stake everything. He was all she hoped for, the only man she ever wanted.

The translucent drops were like tears, convex glass trailing across freckles. It was a portent of the pain he would soon incite. House murmured something into her ear and drew back, closing the door. Stretching, he sat on the edge of the bed.

Cuddy went to him, gave him her hand and he tugged her closer. His palms moved smoothly resting on each hip, he lifted her shirt and brought his nose to her belly button. The soft flesh stomach was persuasion against his lips. She started to lower herself, to straddle his lap, but before she could sit House stood.

"You're wet," he said, aware that he wasn't simply stating the obvious.

Their lips met quickly and he reached for a towel. He always pulled away when they were the closest. Cuddy was convinced it was her, she knew he was no virgin and was the least insecure man she knew, it had to be her. But this was House,

he had to be taking it slow for a reason, everything happens for the reason. Empirical, objective, quantifiable reason.

The towel landed over her shoulder and she accepted that he had halted the horizontal having of physical cohesion in a sigh.

"I'm taking a shower."

"Alone," she added when she felt the shadow of his fingers hovering above her shoulders.

Cuddy stayed here enough that she didn't have to ask. She used his toothbrush and stepped into the tub, turning on the water and adjusting it for her shorter stature. She wouldn't have minded taking a shower with him, but she knew he would never have initiated, he'd stay at a distance and interject intimacy with insult. He still does.

Just outside the bathroom, House was sprawled across his bed, wet and hard, tired and contemplative, thinking of her. Delicate and beautifully blurred on the other side of the shower curtain, her curves and lips, her entire body could be his, if he lets it. Unbuttoning his shorts, he raked his fingernails over his chest, until his nipples hardened and a spray of gooseflesh ran down his arms. He let his erection slip out, hoping she'd see him like this: touching himself, swollen and smiling, his want for her splayed across his stomach.

A slick stroke and then another and it took all his self restraint to not run into the bathroom, push her up against the wall, their four hands sliding down steamed tile, and succumb in the shower––––– to show her everything she was missing, to make her come and in doing so make love, make meaning, make something out of nothing.

The door was unlocked, he knew. They were running out of time, against their numbered days and away from an inevitable end. He'd lose her soon to transience, to the impermanence of truth and be left with nothing but the fleeting memory the these hours, her and happiness. He closed his eyes and slid himself back into his shorts.

Then he had an idea.

House stood, still stiff, and snuck into the bathroom, returning to the bedroom and hiding a pile of clothes. Her clothes. Cuddy came out of the bathroom in nothing but a white cotton towel. He was beaming when he saw her. A chuckle became a sincerely amused laugh.

"Not funny," she said.

"Maybe not to you, but I think it's pretty great."

"Give me back my clothes, House."

"No."

Angry but not surprised, Cuddy crossed her arms and bit her bottom lip. She left the door unlocked hoping he might join her, not expecting him to steal her outfit.

Trust had to come with conditions, in this case protection of personal property.

"House!"

"If you want your clothes back you're going to have to play another game."

"It's cold in here," trying for sympathy.

"It is not. This game is sort of like strip poker but backwards.

You answer a question right, you get piece of clothing."

"What? Why?"

"You have finals this week. The MCAT soon."

His shorts seemed like they had shrunk, she saw he was throbbing through them. The zipper was down. What was he doing while she was in the shower? Cuddy grinned, certain she could win this game.

"I already studied. I've been studying nonstop.

I need a break," she said softly, stepping closer.

"So do you."

Butterflies were fluttering in her stomach and her heart was shivering behind her breastbone. Flirting with him was a game, with this intense tactical and psychological awareness, determination and confrontation, resistance and everything unspoken.

She swayed closer and kissed him, just the faint contact of her victorious smile to his lower lip. And another. Shallow, sweet kisses restrained and frustratingly weak. He pulled her closer, crushing his mouth to hers and lifted her off her feet.

Balance was lost by her leverage over him and they fell to the mattress. The fresh drowsiness of the late hot dusk made the sheets easy to sink into. Smothering him in kisses, Cuddy was purring and palming him through the shorts, descending down his body.

With her head between his feet she stroked his skin, bringing her lips to his ankle. The sight of him in her bed, lazy, arrogant, hard, was enough. She wanted him, here and now and more than anything. Cuddy kissed his knees, her nose settling into the curve of the bone, lips resting on the flat hairless plateau. She kissed his thigh, muscular and whole, tugging on the tight tennis shorts, eyes widened by what she was going to do. She'd gotten good at this during her interlude, the things she could do with her mouth. She blew across his bare skin and brought her lips closer.

"Lise aahh," he said, straining and stopping her; her breath touching him before her lips.

"Greg," she said, the blue of her eyes bleeding into his.

With the word he felt like he waited his whole life for this one night––––– like the name, coming from her lips, answered who he was. The search seemed over, Lisa Cuddy had solved the crux by loving him.

She stroked his forehead and staring at his long blond lashes and the scar on his nose, had the sudden and overwhelming desire to know his history, to know him more intimately than anyone –––––his secrets, his dreams, everything he hid and held sacred. She felt like she was vague and fading from his life and that knowing would make her permanent, knowing would make this last.

They kissed. It was a pithy kiss full of panic an remorse, nostalgia expressed even as the moment's being lived, life rushing in only to be carried away.

Nudity is a state of physical truth, he told himself, justifying with semantics what he was about to do. She was honest under the towel, fidelity and fact, his to be held. A few fingers opened the towel and House ran his hand down her back, so slight she could hardly feel him, so right she never wanted him to stop.

He kissed her shoulder, her chin, licking away water droplets as they ran down her neck. There was resistance and want in what was supposed to happen that night.

House's breath hitched and he moaned at the pain in his chest, the tourniquet tied tight around his heart. The soft sound she heard was needy with desire and made the ache to have him inside her sharper and the heat between her legs hotter. She returned the wordless conveyance with a whimper then caressed his cheek, moulding herself closer to him as he traced over the swell of her breast, his touch still tentative.

Cuddy spread her legs wider and framed his face between both palms, gasping at the feel of him sliding slow and firm between her thighs. For the next few minutes, she did nothing except rub herself against him, arching into the friction and tilting her hips until her clit was found the end of his erection, just enough to stoke a slow, rising fire, a cherry flame hidden deep within her.

There was nothing but terrycloth between them and when she responded with another passionate roll of her hips, it was too much. He stilled her with a kiss.

House was tense and less smug, she could see his eyes glassed over with worry, and wondered what it meant. The towel between them was damp and getting cold and he let her pull it away.

They were naked now, in the May night, trying to hold on to time as it passed; trying to hold onto each other. The moment arrived but he wasn't ready to let go. What they had was more, it could be more. Impatience slaughtered his last opportunity. This time he would wait. This time, meaning would patiently prevail.

Their collateral skin was dreamily acquiescent, warm as he lifted the sheet. She kept kissing him, his shoulder, his neck, his temple; making it harder for him to end it here.

Cuddy finally stopped, knowing that they still have tomorrow, thinking that they still have a hundred tomorrows. The beautiful tension they were building would have its release in time.

It had to get better with time, she thought and then she fell asleep.

-

The scent of her perfume was a lullaby. She was all muscle, tight and tone and still so young. House tried to picture her older, to imagine her in the white lab coat or with glasses but he couldn't. She would always be like this to him, honest perfection, ready and willing to do anything with him, to do anything _for_ him. He wanted to run away with her, away from Michigan, away from it all, just run forever with her together, searching for an endless summer, a place where they'll never be cold, never grow old.

He wanted to stay.

The fan oscillating on the night stand quietly cooled them. He held her like that, stretched across him in the bed that wasn't big enough for both of them. When she curled close he closed his eyes and dreamed of a different night, a different time, a force easier to resist than destiny.

By holding on he was letting go.

They laid still and content a long silent time. Now and then she moved and he changed his arm a little, kissing her damp dark hair once, making a promise to be patient.

-

When her eyes opened early the next day, she knew House was already awake and watching her. Cuddy heard his heart race when she moved against him. She felt where the blood had rushed.

"Good morning," she yawned, rising and arching and stretching on top of him.

Then she smiled, the most serene expression he'd ever seen, a sight that plunged him into a deep deceptive sense of well being. The light of her eyes shined, warm like the morning sun, like a drug he longed to overdose on.

"About studying A&P, " she lulled, before her lips languidly landed on his.

"Less theory, more practice," was all she could manage before kissing him again, a kiss that begged for this to be more, for him to want her as badly as she wants him.

House closed his eyes and kissed her, naming each bone or muscle as his mouth moved over it. He was glorious and gorgeous, his hair thick and tousled and a day's worth of beard burning across her skin. It aged him, she thought when a pool of spring dawn sunshine slanted across his smile.

A giggle escaped as his thumbs roamed over her, incapable of not palming her breasts or teasing her nipples. They were there again––––– the same as last night, hard and wet and on the brink of something easy and inevitable.

"Pretend I'm a patient," House said abruptly as his hands fell away and he sprawled spread eagle under her.

Cuddy paused, not expecting the educational facade to endure. She had no idea of the irony of the role playing, could never have known that one day he _would_ be her patient, that she'd save his life and change his life forever. Now she braced her hands on his chest and asked:

"Where does it hurt?"

Absolutely nowhere, he thought and with painless intensity he loved her, he could do nothing else. It was soul searing, her touch. Eyes misting with every unrequited emotion, ardor and eager devotion she moved over and around him until their shadows on the wall coalesced and everything about the moment melted into marvelous unity.

House saw how she filled every void, how they were just meant to occupy all of each other's empty spaces–––– his hand in the dip of her spine, stroking the verge of her vertebrae, her breasts pressed against chest, coveting the steady rhythm of his pulse. It would have been so easy to come together completely, permanently, not even aware of the physical transition, just knowing that they fit like this, as perfectly as puzzle pieces.

He stopped her before it went any farther than spreading heat and heavy sighs and took her face in his hands, not examining but appreciating.

Backlit by bright blue and white rays of their last new day, she was the most beautiful girl in the world. A vignetted vision, Lisa Cuddy was the one, the only one he could ever love like this.

Her eyes weren't a window to a soul but rather a mirror. Impossible; how she refracted his own light, how her face took and projected back to him his own identity, his own insecurities, every inexpressible emotion.

She saw him, and she knew him and he thought in that instant she would understand.

House looked happy and open, and more, he looked her in the eyes. And she knew, he loved her. She would have married him that moment. It wouldn't have been commitment or compromise, it would have been kismet.

He kissed her before she could say I do, a desperate and grateful kiss, rough and slow and more memorable than any sorority formal, more memorable than medicine, it was her life changing in his hands and, one day it would happen again.

"You should dress," House said, trying to find a way of tactfully relieving the situation. They couldn't do this now, he couldn't take advantage of this unconditional affection and then walk away. He couldn't do this and not stay.

"Big test, remember?"

He wanted to tell her the truth, that she should be more than one night or one morning. He wanted to know that one day she would be his everyday and hoped that maybe, somehow she would be his forever.

"But I'm not done studying," she tried, sucking a wet trail along his neck, gnawing on his clavicle. But House unpinned his arms and punched the clock, letting the shrill static of AM radio fill the room.

Cuddy rolled over, suddenly feeling cold and naked without his body heat. The balls of her feet cramped as they touched the cool carpet. Dejected, she didn't know that House let go now only so that they could have a later.

The clothes he stole were hidden behind his desk. She found the wrinkled pile and dressed in the bathroom.

"There's still time, I don't have class till nine," Cuddy said. She wanted to confront him, to ask him why it always had to end this way.

House stepped into the bathroom and standing behind her, looked in the mirror when she turned her head to kiss him, almost crying.

"Don't worry, I have no intention of fleeing the scene of this crime," he said trying to lighten their goodbye. Cuddy imagined chalk outlines on the bed when they finally committed to more than kissing.

"I promise."

The distance was growing, they both felt it. He gargled with mouthwash and walked back out.

"Tomorrow's commencement, right?" Cuddy asked, dressed and following him.

He nodded.

"I'm coming. We have to celebrate after."

House mumbled in agreement. The color had drained from his face and his blue eyes seemed paler about to lie.

"Celebrate what? It's an expensive formal waste of time, nothing's going to change. I'm not going anywhere."

"I know, but the whole day is an excuse to be happy. And party. And be with the people who love you and support you."

He winced when she kissed him goodbye. He almost told her then about Hopkins, inspired by the sight of her walking away from him, not knowing if he could survive seeing it again, not knowing anymore what he was supposed to do, what was right and what was untrue.

_**commence, meant**_

It wasn't until he came to Ann Arbor that House became aware of his own senescence; that he was done growing up and could only grow old.

A sundial at the center of the campus made time seem like an ancient invention, a myth disproved and disregarded years ago, with spires and statues and intimidating architecture camouflaged in its own anachronistic state.

Within this collegiate complexity, the annex bridging childhood and career, ignorance and experience–––– the buildings, the books, the broad unbreakable border between the future–––– there is no time. The days turn into nights, sleepless and spent studying. Progress passes in semesters, quantified by credits and letters. The years pass in a flash of sex and text until it all ends abruptly either with defeat or a degree.

If the complexity is too subtle, too varied, the values change with each lesion of vitality until nothing can be learned from the past with which to face the future.

.

It was over only to begin again.

All of Ann Arbor was an orchestra out there in the blue dark springtime. The sound of the marching band was high and loud and everywhere, making the promise that, in a little while, life would be beautiful as a story, promising happiness—–––and by that promise giving it. The music gave love hope in its own survival.

The medical school graduation ceremony was replete with pageantry, sad songs and speeches, tears and unapologetic happiness; rituals and emotions House could only snare at, in a black cap and gown decorated with tassels, sash and cords.

Commencement, he decided that night, was a misnomer for med students. Their beginning was unceremonious, it was the first day they stepped foot in the hospital. They've had a thousand starts in the last four years. Their lives won't undergo seismic shifts but minor adjustments.

For him it would be another departure, the inability to every stay. But as he reflected, waiting in an uncomfortable seat, he knew what really mattered. He knew what it all had meant. The first time a complete stranger unflinchingly trusted him with the most intimate details of their life, the first time he sutured a wound, gave a shot, started an IV, plunged a knife, wrote a prescription, heard a murmur, or slid in a catheter––––– the first time he saw another person die before his eyes–––– all paled in comparison to the first time he saw her, their first kiss and this, their first farewell, Lisa Cuddy leaving his life.

On stage, he felt ridiculous. The other medical students' faces were animated in the moments before they crossed the platform to receive their diplomas. His was a melancholy expression, crossed with regret for something that had to end so that something else could begin. When it was time, House wandered slowly down the aisle and as his name was announced, tied to the title he'd spent his whole life earning, he finally forced a smile, searching the crowd to see her, applauding his accomplishment, tears in her eyes and not his.

Lisa Cuddy was there, the day he became _Doctor_ Gregory House.

The formality ended with family and friends with balloons and flowers rushing forth all at once. Cuddy looked professional in heels and pearls and a pencil skirt with strong calves and a muted shade lipstick. She wasn't a girl anymore and his heart ached for the woman in front of him, the love he didn't deserve. Past her he saw his parents, a cruel sneer frozen on his face when John asked where the head was. Cuddy hugged the new MD and kissed him on the cheek and Blythe asked to be introduced.

"Later mom," he said but Cuddy reached a hand out and proceeded with her own introduction. House pulled her away before they could start discussing any of the embarrassing milestones of his childhood or before his human polygraph mother could ask if he loved this Lisa and he wouldn't be able to lie.

Bright burning stars drenched the outskirts of campus in a lusterless platinum. The heavens were a violet azure with a crescent moon hanging on the edge of the horizon. It was almost impossible not to be affected by the sheer beauty of the sky. But the deceptive promise of staying was to be broken tonight.

They walked a moonlit mile, quietly hand in hand, away from Hill Auditorium. The light faded and drifted across the land, the isolated acres of collegiate eternity, casting shadows of spires and statues and a shooting star–––––the incorporeal place where dreams were the only reality and where time ceased to exist.

It started to rain.

They reached the end of the road and stopped. In the tragic silhouette of the legend, there was only enough light that she could see the pain in his eyes.

"Cuddy," he said, instead of Lise and she knew it would be bad news.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

A long reluctant beat.

"I got accepted back into Hopkins. For my residency."

"What? You're leaving?"

He nodded.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"I..." He started. He had to make her hate him. Hate was the only thing that could negate the hurt.

"I didn't think it made a difference."

"But yesterday you said––––"

"Yesterday I lied."

"You son of a bitch. Why do you do this? You open up and then you run away."

House shrugged. I'm sorry was on his lips but he knew he couldn't say it, just stare at her sapphire eyes crying in the rain.

"So you didn't mean any of it? Two years of my life, wasted waiting for you, thinking this was going somewhere, thinking it meant something."

"I don't..." He started.

"I had a choice. If I stay here–––"

"If you stay here you'll be with me," she said. Tears streamed down her face. She was begging now, about to lose something it would take years to replace.

"I can't."

I can't make you happy. I can't make this work.

"I can't stay."

Cuddy pushed him, slapping a hand against his chest and sobbing into the nape of his neck. She hated him and she loved him and she kissed him one last time and walked away from him, for what she thought would be forever.

-

Deserted, abandoned, alone Cuddy wept. The last ray of silver twilight dissolved into darkness, a prophecy of the the bleak years ahead. This midnight her desire saw an end and beginning, the splendor and sadness of the world, the loss of her inevitable lover and best friend.

Hopkins had brought them together and it would tear them apart. She still had his shirt. Soon it would be a relic, tangible proof that they made a connection, temporary as youth, fleeting as hope itself.

By the time he made it back to his apartment, House was exhausted, disgusted and wondering if he had made the wrong choice, if he had said the wrong words. There was guilt but there was always guilt. He wanted to stay, but it would be a stupid choice. Objectivity had to reign, he'd benefit more from Hopkins, He'd learn more and do more and it was clearly the right decision.

Unless it wasn't. Unless he'd be more miserable without her, unless he'd gotten himself into something that hinged on complete detachment, withdrawing and isolating himself from everything but his work.

He slammed the door shut and cursed. It wasn't fair to have to choose: a life spent indulging her or a life spent indulging his obsession.

Once he'd raged against inanimate objects a while, he calmed and turned to see she had left him a graduation present. A brand new labcoat, stethoscope and one red rose were laid out across his bed. The card on top said congratulations.

Something broke him at the sight, like the bow of a boat cracking. His conscience was capsizing. Everything she had done for him, everything she would ever do for him, he knew. Cuddy would have made the sacrifice. She would have stayed even if it meant suffering. She would've stayed to spare him the pain of her leaving.

They both though that they would never meet again.

-

House left for Hopkins three days later. Cuddy never called or came by and he knew she didn't want to see him, that there was nothing he was willing to do to make this right.

Kicking open the door, it was deja vu. This was the same apartment as when he left a few years before. Everything was drifting back to its place, as if Ann Arbor never happened, as if there had been no Lisa Cuddy in his life.

It was all just a dream, a form of chemical madness. He had to wake, he had to come out of it eventually.

Night fell and he was still unpacking. The labcoat was laid on the bed and the stethoscope hung over a doorknob. A tennis ball he had taken was mixed among his things and he threw it against the wall a few times. Before he went to bed he picked up the labcoat and tried it on, examining himself in the full length mirror. He never liked labcoats. They were formal and official, a costume like a cape, announcing to the world that he was some sort of superhero, declaring he was a doctor. But that's not to say he didn't like how he looked in one.

House looked professional, he looked grownup. He was now, with a decade spent between universities, most of the time lost in classrooms or labs or clinics. In front of the mirror he slouched, disappointed with himself. He put his hands in the pockets after a minute and found a piece of paper. It was a note.

"_Midnight. I'm waiting._

_I love you._

_Lisa_"

In chaos and crisis, he sank. There was no more rowing, and the turbulent waves made it impossible to swim. The ocean seemed to stumble, to fall on its knees and bleed a pure thin salt, drowning him in saline nostalgia.

The note only reinforced what he already knew. He could have had her that night. He should have stayed. She loved him.

Homesick, he shut the door and coming back into the room stood for a moment lost in thought with thetennis ball still clasped in his hand. There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he ran or rode, aimless and depressed, revving his bike or shredding the soles of his sneakers. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully—––––assuaged only by the conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally futile, utterly worthless.

Passing incessantly from tearful surprise to regret, he drank. There was beer in his fridge, scotch in the closet, bourbon under his bed. He drank to forget but even in the heaviest alcoholic stupor, he saw her. The last woman he'd disappoint, the last woman he'd have to leave would be the last woman he let himself love.

House felt like he wasn't meant to lose this chance, that the night they never met shouldn't be the rest of their lives. He died in the regret, his soul gasping to catch one last breath. Submerged under water, the beat of his heart left rippling circles on surface, the last shred of proof that it ever existed, the last effort to live before it broke irreparably.

He had let something go that he could never get back. A mistake he knew he was making, it would remain a memory.

But he didn't know that just because the past has already happened doesn't mean that it's finished and unchangeable. The past is a kaleidoscope, evolving and rotating. The shapes and colors are constantly changing. It's reflection and refraction, images that can't be controlled and lenses that never lie.

One day, in a mirrored ray of light, his body will be borne in on the tide.

-

Late for his first day as a resident, House awoke with a headache, thoroughly hungover and telling himself that nothing mattered. It was consolation enough. His eyes roamed lazily around the room, squinting at the bright morning light. He saw her note and felt nauseated.

Then he picked up his guitar, the acoustic he'd had since he was a kid, and started playing. But the song was missing the honest susceptibility, the message of the others the last two years, leaving only the echolalia of missed opportunity. She was like intravenous inspiration, he regretted never playing for her.

Sick from the silence, he turned on the radio and and started to dress. '_You Can't Always Get What You Want'_ came on and he almost cried at the ironic and appropriate and perfect soundtrack for the mistake that was this beginning.

-

House worked. He was a doctor now, with the labcoat in his closet, trying to forget. But the bond that had formed out of boundless ambition couldn't be broken by a distance of days or miles. They would always have a past. Michigan and a history, a time shared and remembered. It is a past full of life, eager to irritate, provoke, insult and tempt them both to destroy, repeat and recapture it.

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_I apologize for chronological errors in the last chap and any (esp medical/tennis) errors in this one. I do research but also embellish and manipulate things to suit the story better. I'll post the next chapter as soon as possible._

**_Thank you for reading, please review!_**


	3. Negate Everything

_Part 3/9 _

_Please remember this is essentially a post ep for JTTW, so most everything after 5x11 will not be incorporated and will become rather AU from this chapter on. Also this is the last chapter of the first volume. Hopefully it was a coherent three chapters. Sorry this took a while longer to post. It's a shorter chapter though, most will be until near the end. I will update with the next volume and chapter four as soon as possible. Thank you for reading and for all the encouragement. Please review._

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_

**III. Negate Everything**

In a bedroom that wasn't his own, House woke with a stiff neck and on the cold side of the pillow. His right leg was throbbing, the recently mutilated limb, though not as conspicuous, was just a repulsive under the sheets. He looked at the dusky gray shadows in the corner of the room and saw clothes, disheveled, rumbled, his and on the floor. He smelt of stale liquor and a familiar perfume. Outside the sun had thrown a dust filled beam across the window sill, a beam broken by a wide wooden chandelier overhead. House lay quiet and still, comfortably drugged after dry swallowing a handful of vicodin.

It was at least thirty comatose seconds of staring at the ceiling before he had a sense of life close beside him and another thirty until he realized it was Lisa Cuddy.

She lay asleep. He watched a while, trying to gauge how close she was to waking. He wondered if she was dreaming. He wondered what she dreamed of when she dreamed. The most living part of him, the part whose existence he will always refuse to acknowledge, wanted to dream with her; if only a waking dream, if only a word whispered in her ear that she could never hear.

There was the dilemma of leaving. The night before he made the logical decision of going as soon as it was over. He didn't remember falling asleep and as he tried to move realized it was more than likely that he passed out from the combination of booze and pills and exhaustion. But now he was awake and confronted with the inconvenience of evacuating. He stood slowly, his muscles burning, bones bruised, on one leg. Stammering to the bathroom surprisingly silent he emptied his bladder, splashed his face with cold water and examined himself in the mirror, spending the minute on personal reflection. Holding his breath, he tried to remember what he had been like when he was young, as if only then he realized he no longer was.

The aged mirrored image jogged a memory. It was a dream he had when her arms were around him last night and he felt home for the first time in years. He dreamed that he'd gotten kicked out of Hopkins again, that the repetition and asymmetry of his youth's timeline weren't so random and meaningless. He dreamed that he found the note the night of commencement, that he showed up on her doorstep, that they made love and it changed everything.

He dreamed he could run.

Facing a truth he could no longer deny, House felt as alone as ever. It was the May after he went golfing, the May after he'd lost Stacy. Walking away from the mirror and the memories, he picked up the pile of clothes and began dressing. His briefs came first, his own nudity abysmal in the dim light, a scar where pride had been. He sat, frustrated that the simple task was excruciating and when he could only find one sock, sighed and stopped dressing.

He laid back down, with his single socked foot against the headboard and his eyes level with Cuddy's toes. How he ended up here was less important than where he'd be without her. (_The morgue after white complex tachycardia, an amputee if Stacy had taken any other doctor's advice_.) But this was where he was, too tired to resist or escape the comfort of cotton and down and Cuddy, his last constant. Just a little longer, he thought, hopelessly drifting into another dream, his lips close to her ankle, his breath a kiss that may never come true.

An hour passed and with House's toes dragging gently across her ear and his knee bent into the curve of her hip, Cuddy was abruptly awakened. She ached from the inside out, feeling the pain that atones for pleasure as much as the man beside her. Morning light graced his shin, tracing the profile of his half dressed body. He smelled of sweat and bourbon and her. Cuddy's eyes opened with no expectations, but he remained, alive and at her side. She kissed the sideways arch of his one bare foot and stared at his closed eyes a distance away. Why was he laying upside down? Why was he half dressed?

Why was he still here?

She tried to sleep but after she put a pillow under his right leg he moved unconsciously kicking her. So after a murmured acknowledgment of what it meant, Cuddy rotated to lay beside him, face to face upside down, the wall at their feet, their heads at the bottom of the bed. Covering them both with the comforter, she kissed his lips softly and curled close to him, breathing against his shoulder, grateful he was alive and that happy he was with her.

A few hours of light sleep later, she awoke again and alone. He'd left a note but the message was scribbled, addressed to Cuddy and not Lisa. The scrawled goodbye reminded her of the note she left so many years before and she kept it, not knowing what happens next.

The infarction was a high price to pay for reunion.

At home, memory betrayed him. In a flash of blurred twilight the night before, he limped to her door, every step a struggle. They fought, it got physical, he stammered forward, she pushed. He pushed back and crawled out of her bed naked the next morning.

The push was more. It forced a response, a desperate attempt to grab at something during a fall. Because from the moment they met House has been falling.

He's still falling and Joy was just another weight that made him fall farther, deeper, away from pain and regret and into a future, one where she doesn't have to be alone. One where he doesn't have to be either. House fell in love all over again.

-

After their first time, the minutes, the moments, the months that followed, House began contemplating the next time.

The initial scenario was impulsive, imprudent and once he was hired developed into a scene where he bends her over the desk just to have her push him up against a wall. Heat, passion, the possibility of repetition waned over the years.

But when he confirmed her baby whim–––––("You're on fertility meds," was never really a question)–––––the possibility returned.

It was different.

Lust and libido were only a part of it. House was being more manipulated by hindsight. The anger, the arguments, guilt and pain; he wanted to apologize. He wanted to commiserate for everything she sacrificed and all the lost time. He just wanted to be with her again.

House had it planned.

It would be at her place, in her bed so that she felt safe, so that she could relax, and so that he could leave when the claustrophobia of committing to cuddling with Cuddy (spooning with an administrator, sleeping with his boss) became too much.

He'd be gentle and show her that he remembered where to put his mouth to make her gasp, where to touch her to make her tremble. He'd be slow.

When his mind drifted, past the desolate gaping schism between fantasy and reality, he'd wonder about leaving. If she expected him to. What would happen if he stayed? What would happen if he succeeded?

A kid would have kept them connected, even when time pushed them forward, even when circumstances separated them, they would have biology linking them together. They'd have something to show for every other last chance, something more than administration and a singular obsession.

When Cuddy quit the IVF it felt like his failure as much as hers. He wanted her to be happy, she deserved to be happy. And he could have done that for her.

Adoption wasn't an option, he thought she quit. She got back on the pill. Married to her job, the hospital was her baby.

The Joy revelation left his heart and brain in an afflicted tumult. Turkey basters or a meth baby, it wasn't how it was supposed to be. She was desperate and he didn't see, he didn't save her when he could have. It was too late.

Guilt and the familiar echolalia of missed opportunity rushed forth all at once. He showed up at her door, knocked and negated everything.

The kiss was a culmination of every broken promise left in the ruins of their blighted hope. It was time catching up and love conquering logic.

But it wasn't enough.

_**more winter dreams and peppermint implication**_

"Merry Christmas, Cuddy," he said feeling demoted.

She'd gotten what she waited and worked so long for. She didn't need him. House walked away slowly, hesitantly, knowing that this changes everything but not knowing how much.

Now he's home. Christmas Eve he drinks, to scoff at sobriety and kill selected memories because he can't think about it or about her anymore this year. But the reminiscent biography is vivid and perpetual, being written despite his resistance.

Musing about the miracle, he raises his glass to Cuddy the mother and to himself for the mystery. Any other hospital or any other department and Cuddy wouldn't have even known about the case. She wouldn't have solved it or sought more or saved a baby. She wouldn't be in NICU right now, watching monitors and wiping away warm tears of joy with a renewed faith in herself and her child.

He falls asleep trying to block the image of the family portrait: single mother and spoiled daughter. House tries not to see what's missing.

-

-

Christmas day he eats Chinese food with Wilson and they laugh about shattered stained glass at his father's funeral. House thinks of Wilson's brother this time of year and wonders if it's worse having a sibling disappear or an impostor parent die.

The day after he goes in because he's got nothing better to do and finds a gift on his desk, in silver metallic paper with a gold bow and no card. House knows who it's from and why it's late.

But he doesn't open it, not yet.

The unlit office is cold. His chair is close to the window and the frost is obscuring his view. There's nothing to see anyway, just the dimensionless glare of the security light on the ice of the parking lot. His bike, Cuddy's car.

House knew she would be here. Now, he admits to himself, it's why he's here. He searches for a hat and limps to NICU incognito.

Cuddy's dream is reality now, cooing and ahhing in a warm safe bed in her hospital. Rachel is a reward for her selfless hope and naive vision of the world as it could be. The baby girl negated everything, the years of failed IVF attempts, the unjust loss of Joy, resignation before a kiss. This new life is a second chance and a fresh start and she falls asleep hoping she never wakes from such a wonderful winter dream.

She hasn't left the room since the baby was admitted. And House knows she won't until Rachel's released. The gradual transition from administrator to mother is the epiphany he didn't ask for, the diagnosis he didn't see coming.

It's a disease, he thinks, her ceaseless dedication to it all and the pursuit still for something more. She became a doctor again, the day she became a parent. Her naive hope led her to a life and now she's going to foster that life, adopt that life and change her own.

Cuddy is changing his life just as much.

But House can't say it. He can't doubt or berate or convince her anymore, she's consumed by the new beginning and her baby girl.

He can only watch her dream from the hall and wonder where they go from here.

-

The next few days he broods, bouncing the tennis ball against the wall, a reminder of her and happiness, two Mays they spent together, all the times he forfeited or ran away. Spring rain or end of December snow, both leave him wet and shivering and alone. The winter nights are worse now, the cold penetrates to the bone and it's not just his right leg that throbs it's his left from being leaned on for fifteen years and his shoulder from pacing with the cane, from _needing_ the cane.

The tub is filling slowly and to sink and soak and sweat is what he needs, something to relax instead of distract.

When he drowses off on the couch after the bath, his thinning hair is still wet and his sore arm is hanging over the edge, making his knuckles knock against the hard wood floor when he moves.

It's the distraction he's dreaming of.

Weeks ago, after he was taken hostage and Cuddy's office was thoroughly destroyed, House's conscience resolved to reciprocate, as best he could, her obstinate solicitude. He called her parents, had her desk from Michigan days shipped here and surprised her in a way they'd both forgotten he could. All of the crass, caustic, snide mistakes he made that day, or any day, were lost when she realized what he did, when she realized what it meant.

The desk negated everything and she strode to his office to thank him and to ask one of the many questions that had to be answered.

House had a choice, and he chose to not leave alone that night. He wasn't expecting Cuddy to thank him but he wanted to leave before she did. Everything about their situation was irresolute except the erection he'd had since he kissed her, that his hand only satisfied until he made it to work, until he saw her again.

If she thanked him, he'd have been forced to acknowledge that he did a nice thing. If she thanked him, he knew exactly where it would lead. House walked away once, from the passion and opportunity, he stood in her hallway and said goodbye when he could have kissed her again. When he _should_ have kissed her again. And again.

Sex is irreconcilably complicated when it means something and with them it would be a coital catastrophe because it would mean everything. It's not just that she's his boss, if that were the only discrepancy, they would have stopped resisting years ago and kept it casual, sexual and been unaffected when it ended. The attraction has always been there, the magnetism that spells cataclysm.

The past is growing paler, that's the problem. It's there, always, but not alive enough to motivate an initiative, just occupying sufficient space in their psyches to remain this Pandora's box of a shared past, something they're both afraid of opening, a place they're petrified of going.

That night the choice was easy: deflect, avoid and pay.

If he had been open and sensitive and waiting for her, said "You're welcome," and kissed her, everything she wanted–––––he couldn't have stopped. The box would have been opened and all the evils, ills and burdens of a real relationship released.

So he took the hooker home, and Cuddy saw. But she didn't know he only did it to keep their connection simple, and in doing so proved to himself that he didn't just give her the desk to get in her bed.

House felt something for her, though he couldn't really name it. Nostalgia or animosity from having his office invaded, probably a combination of both. But he ignored it and suppressed it and stumbled through the door that night with a girl half his age latched onto his lapels.

He was unusually anxious. The lump in his throat was rising and he tried to swallow it with bourbon. The booze drained but the lump remained, aggravated by the knot growing in his stomach. She peeled his jacket off and he hung his cane on the ledge leading to the bedroom, knowing he wouldn't need it.

The muscle raging beside the leg revolting from the absence of muscle had been hard all day. There was the prospect of starting something with Cuddy, a fight, an affair, the fondling. There was also the possibility of the day ending like this, the only safe way to scratch the itch.

Ironic, he thought as she slid his belt off, that being stripped by a stranger was easier than admitting how he feels about his boss, his best friend. The thought dissolved in the dark room, and he swiped his shirt off and swayed onto the bed in just his boxerbriefs.

She handed him a condom and undressed quickly. It was hollow and shallow and everything he expected. House liked that there was no subtext when he paid for sex, no foreplay, just a means to an end, supply and demand.

Demand was vaguely an exaggeration. It had been months since he'd done this and it ached how stiff he was, how badly he needed release at someone else's hands; though any part of her would have sufficed.

Primed and eager to be pumped, the layer of latex was in place and a unassured 'actress' leaning onto the bed. She saw his thigh only then, when they were close, when she was reaching to put a palm on it. House examined her response and saw no shock or disgust, indifference if anything, like she saw it as an irrelevant incongruity in geography and not a physical defect, or even a scar. The reaction, or lackthereof, both surprised and solaced him.

The nails scratching his knee were manicured recently, or so he deduced of his hired faux cadaver. A second lingered when he thought he was being morbid but she turned, squatting in his lap, bolstering herself on strong thighs, House staring at her back. Reverse was better, with a nameless woman, always on top. He didn't have to look at her, she didn't have an identity. Neither did he, like this, refusing to be seen. But he couldn't complain, his hands could still reach all the important places and the guilt and regret crept closer with dulled impendency.

It was amicable detachment, mutually agreeing to ride without eyes, to share nothing and feel little more. He lifted her hair and grazed his griseled chin along her back when she sank down onto him, rising and falling slowly. Blinded by ignorant bliss, the heat engulfed him and he let her do her job for as long as he could. Grimaced, he trembled, trying, but the tense weight of her legs bracketing his was too much. It was more than just that, a heavy false sense of infidelity fell on his heart. He pulled out.

"I can't," he said.

"Get off."

She thought of replying with 'I'm trying,' but didn't. Instead she crawled to the bottom of the bed on her hands and knees and stayed that way.

"No," he grumbled to the pale cheeks facing him.

The briefs were only at his shins and he sat, kicking his legs over the bed's edge, and pulling them up.

"There's still time," she said, uncertain if he was worried about the money.

House huffed a nihilistic huff, still throbbing and seeping, still incomplete. He was frustrated and angry and everything unreleased was a mounting maelstrom of impossible emotions. He wanted to say that there's never enough time, that this was the wrong time, that he's wasted too much time. But he just winced, rolled the condom off and rubbed his thigh.

The girl whose name he couldn't remember, whose name didn't matter, sat beside him. She was pretty he thought, not exceptional but better than most working girls.

It was temporary though, she was only attractive because she was young and the brief meditation of unenduring beauty made him feel old, a gray specter on the edge of extinction. The past seemed so distant, out of sight and drifting inevitably out of mind.

He always considered old age a situation where a person passed maturity, fate had ended and there was no longer the need to fear the mystery called the future.

All love was final.

Only that night did he recognize that this would be it if he did nothing––––the monotonous motions of a phone call, an hour in the dark with unmet eyes and a condom tossed in the trash while he reaches for his wallet.

It was too familiar and he couldn't stand to make it final. Inaction was no longer an option. He scanned the room searching for his cell phone, he wanted to call the hospital, to call Cuddy and see where they stood.

Cold fingers curled over his forearm and he shrugged them away. He couldn't see his phone and sighed in resignation, reminding himself that he's been a doctor for more than twenty years. Cuddy was with him when the aspiration was consummated. The desk was an attempt to make her remember a dream becoming reality, to recommence what was meant to happen twenty years ago.

But this Christmas changed everything. And in the aftermath of another unexpected alteration House didn't want to remember anymore. He wanted to forget because it hurt too much to reminisce alone, to know he made the wrong choice, a thousand mistakes and that there was no escape from the demise of their fate.

Before he could stand or shrink or catch his breath from the anxiety in his chest that had just imploded, she was on her knees with her face between his thighs. Tenacious tips of fingers trailed up his legs and tugged the briefs back down. A polite professional, she carefully avoided the scar and took him in her hand. Still hard in spite of himself, House let out a sharp sigh when she stroked him, her unyielding palm doing all but make him scream Cuddy's name.

A woman kneeling and kneading and killing the part of him that could not forget did for his ego the opposite of what it did for his conscience, he felt proud and pathetic in an excited simultaneous instant.

Then her mouth descended onto him and his eyes squeezed shut. House didn't want to stop her, he couldn't. Reveling in the brevity of a few black minutes, he could pretend it was someone else, he could imagine it was 1987.

She teased the soft skin of the head sucking in short intervals, rubbing a thumb to spread the slick shining translucence, and finally, _finally _swallowed the whole hard length.

Intense but routine, she licked the ridged line on the underside, and tugged on his testicles, silent and holding her breath every time he jutted deeper down her throat. What she was doing with her mouth was exquisite, tongue lapping along sensitive skin, flicking the slit of his glans, her hand strumming his scrotum and feeling it tighten. House was bucking, almost imperceptibly, jerking and squinting and reaching a rhythm as he pumped into her mouth.

The man wanted it to be over immediately, he wanted to be a diagnostician again and not a desperate John, to investigate a rare disease, not exploit an orifice of a carnal capitalist. He thrust as far and fast as he could, a hand holding her head still.

Then his hips lifted and his feet rose and slammed solid against the floor, grounding himself for this futile attempt to defy gravity. House threw his head back and gave a gruff guttural grunt, the same sound he makes when he's in excruciating pain. With his fingers buried in her hair, the grunt became a gag and a gasp as she sucked and her throat constricted around him.

A hot gush and then another streamed into her mouth. House came hard in a lucid bright empty moment, drawing in a breath of stale air with a shuddering sigh, not knowing if there will ever be anything more than this.

Chest heaving and stomach cramping, his eyes were still closed, pleasure dissipating. The release had ceased and he heard a strange sound. When he had the energy to look, he saw she had turned away to spit in the requisite tissue before even standing. The sight was less sobering than the pain, when she pushed on his right knee to get to her feet.

Eluding her encouraging stare, he gave the streetwalking thespian the cash and watched her leave, remembering all at once everything he just paid to forget.

He took a tentative step to see if the weakness had gone from his legs. A cold mess, he shook off the transgressive transaction and limped to the bathroom, wiping himself off, putting on pants and bringing a handful of cold water to his face, followed by a handful of vicodin.

But there was no relief in wont or the cessation of significance.

For years the most widely squandered sum has been given as an offering to destiny that he might not remember the things most worth remembering, the things he'd always remember––––Ann Arbor, the Lisa Cuddy of yesterday, fragments of time never to be regained.

And he knows, he's always known that he loves Cuddy as an intelligent, faithful, irreplaceable friend, not a mistress. He hasn't touched her in thirteen years and even then it was a symptom of denial, seeing what they could have been but knowing it was already too late to change. It was one night and another note and though it was less significant than either of them had hoped, House knows, it was more than he could ever have again.

-

Morning comes and he drifts dreary out of the dream. The last day of the year is skylight with no sun, gray and overcast and as bleak as any before. House meanders shirtless into the bathroom, with a blanket over his shoulders and a firm grip on the cane. It's become a part of him and he hates the moments when it feels natural. It's a limb more than an appendage, the most painful and humiliating defect branching out, a display of evidence–––– he's not a doctor but a cripple. A signal of insufficiency more than necessary support, he holds it and leans on it and missed it the few short months that he didn't need it.

The living room seems emptier than ever before. It smells of dust on text and a middle aged man who watches too much pornography. And soap operas. He sets his wooden companion against the couch's armrest and reaches for his guitar before sitting. Music it the only thing that can fill the solemnity of silence or kill his soul's reticence.

A song starts, familiar as his fingers find the chords along the frets. He's still hazy, unsure if it was a dream or a night long conscious musing about a mistake. But as he gravitates awake, he realizes he's playing the anthem he wrote in the eighties about an angelic athlete named Lisa. Strumming somber and slower, he lets the song drift away and imagines his whole life as a nightmare he can never wake from and it stings, to still have the strings of the unsung serenade under calloused fingers, scarred and scratched and older hands.

They're still the same.

He drops the acoustic and stands, searching for his keys. But his attention is stolen as he reaches for them. Something is glaring metallic in the corner, on a table. It is the present he received a few days earlier. House opens it out of curiosity, to confirm what he already knows.

The gift is from Cuddy. Tearing the paper off assuages the pain of the present with the poetry of the past. It is a box, and in it:

A tshirt.

It's his JHU shirt, the one he'd given her when she was a doting sophomore, when their unaddressed affectation was in its infancy. House holds it as a relic, as if it was never just a piece of his wardrobe, but a monument of his youth's achievements and now, the remains of a ruined relationship.

Don't look back, he tells himself, but once worn by the woman he loves, it is all that he can look at. Tangible missed opportunity, faded and blue. The vague vestige makes him dizzy with regret, panicked now, wondering why she gave it back.

When it first appeared he suspected what it was and that she had given it as a reciprocal gesture for the desk. But in his hands, it feels different. Cuddy has given up on him. On _them. _Which was exactly what he wanted her to do and never thought would happen. The shirt represents his choice of Hopkins over her and giving it back means that she has made the same choice, a life as a mother over a life waiting for him to grow up and admit that he loves her.

House lets the shirt fall. In a rush he's out, thinking this can't be all, this can't be all they have left.

-

The first thing he sees when he barges into her office is Cuddy sucking the red stripes off of a candy cane. Administrative exhibition complements his voyeuristic vice. She has a pen in one hand and is hanging up the phone with the other. She's stressed but sleeplessly serene and he forces his mind to deflect the paradox that is a proud professional muti-tasking matriarch.

"Are you trying to turn me on?"

This is foreplay for them and as close to sex as they might ever come again. In the beat that she ignores him, House thinks of how deliciously peppermint her mouth must taste, and if she stands he'll kiss her–––––she'd hardly be unsuspecting, symbolically fellating him in her silent subtle way.

It's always implication between them, never expression, and in the blink of an eye, that almost bothers him.

"Thank you," Cuddy says when she finally acknowledges his presence, looking up, her preoccupied expression meeting his blank one.

Instead of a witty retort of why she might be thanking him, House just stands uneven and guffawed.

"For the desk," she clarifies.

"I wouldn't have bothered if I knew you'd just be changing diapers on it."

She sighs and stops writing. House demands her complete attention, she will suffer if she surrenders anything less.

"Why are you here?"

"I don't––––" He starts. He doesn't want the shirt, he meant to bring it, to give it back, to lay it on the desk and let the amazing and the miserable memories lie tangent, touching but never intersecting. There has always been a boundary separating their smiles from their sorrows. House held onto the light even as the darkness grew, the opaque imbalance perpetually threatening to eclipse what's left of the yellow halo of yesterday.

But he realizes now that he doesn't have the shirt with him. House pauses, scrutinizing the space as he formulates the rest of his response. The desk is cluttered with books about motherhood and adoptive parenting and somewhere beneath it is the paperwork for foster care and under that case files–––––a strange hierarchy in folders and hardcovers, prioritized by bookmarks and signatures.

Only then does it fall on him, Cuddy is a mother now. Not in any biologically linked way, but she's auditioned for and been given the role. A single, unsuspecting mother, he should sympathize or admire her but House will only let himself feel angry at the entire fatherless scenario. False paternity and teenaged paternity are better than no paternity. It's not Cuddy receiving his compassion, it's the baby who like him, will never know her real dad.

"I don't know," he finishes, adding:

"I was looking for the Dean of Medicine not mommy dearest."

And he walks out.

-

House goes home. He holds the tshirt and has no idea what will happen if he confronts her. Cuddy might put the desk back into storage and any progress of the last weeks would be negated. She's still slipping away and he has to do something. After he's brooded long enough about every unfulfilled potentiality, he's gone, remembering the shirt but forgetting his cane.

The clinic is quiet and closed. The sick and snotty masses have congregated in Times Square. Soon the world will be counting down but he's counting floors, taking the elevator to NICU when he finds her office is dark and empty.

But she's not in the baby's room either and when House asks a nurse, he's told that Dr. Cuddy has gone home for the night. House thinks it's a victory for his cynicism, working mom's devotion has waned already and the rugrat isn't even discharged yet. This is his chance, to change her mind and negate everything again.

-

_Through the years__  
We all will be together,  
If the Fates allow_

Cuddy's driving home now. The radio is still playing Christmas music and it haunts her when she wonders about House. How they're tied together somehow, but never supposed to be together. She gave the shirt back as a reminder. She never forgot that he left and has been holding her breath waiting for him to do it again. He had priorities, an obsession, a gift––––– all she had was blindingly boundless ambition, her highest priority was him, it's always been him. But not anymore. Now, there is finally somebody more important in life than Greg House.

A carseat is strapped in the back of her Mercedes, but she's alone, except for the choir accompanying Pachelbel. Fleeing the hospital for an hour tonight to stop home, pick up a few things and make sure everything is ready for the new baby, _her_ baby, the song would be her wedding processional, if she could ever complete the picture.

-

The journey there lacks objectivity, but it's hardly out of character for it epitomizes the capitulation of caution. Hunched over his motorcycle, House can focus on the present instant of flight, speeding forward, the rearview mirror easier to disregard than memory. Delegating speed to a machine annihilates autonomy but he has no choice, riding at night is the closest to running he can ever come.

The ketamine wore off before winter but when he was still with Stacy, racing against a December midnight was his retreat. He loved her, but to run away physically was the only way he could remain emotionally. Frost on his fingertips, lungs full of frozen air, shoes defying gravity and ice; he was constantly conscious of his blisters, his body temperature, his stamina. His distance. Now on his bike House's body is outside of the process and he's relinquished to a speed that is noncorporeal, mechanical, pure oblivious acceleration.

On his bike, he has no idea how far he's come.

Cowardice or the ignorance of progress, he wavered on Cuddy's doorstep once this winter, watching her through the window, alone and gorgeous. Confidently sipping and reading she was immaculate loneliness. A love story, House thought, no medical journal or text book or administrative aid, she needed to escape it all. He wanted to take her, knock on the door, take her hand and never let go–––––take her anywhere she wanted to go. He wanted to be the escape and, knowing he never could be, he turned around.

Tonight is different though. It's New Year's Eve, the most inevitably anticipated approach of change. The solution to time running out is time beginning again and the cure for the chronic crux of continuity is the invention of ends and rebirth through contrived beginnings.

But admitting that he's falling in love, that he's been falling for years, risks standing or landing and watching it all fall apart.

_**resolution**_

Curiosity is a curse. For House it's more. Tonight it's motivation. The overwhelming temptation to open the Pandora's box of history and possibility has brought him to her door. He doesn't knock. Peering through the window, he can't see her. It's dark inside, with one light on and he's shivering, searching for clues and hoping she's home. When he's successfully convinced himself that she isn't here the door swings open without warning and their surprised stares meet and tangle.

"I didn't think you'd be home."

"What are you doing here?"

"Here," he says stepping inside and handing her the present.

"The Hopkins shirt, I can't take it––––"

He's about to say 'it's yours,' and Cuddy knows this is the moment to go, to walk out and leave him standing alone the way he did too long ago. But she can't move, she's paralyzed by the past made tactile and present. The shirt's in her hands again and in a flash of the way it all ended, she tosses it aside.

"Not now, House."

"Now."

A step closer, he's here, a beginning, bodies breathing and being. It doesn't feel like deja vu but an imperfect intervention when his mouth finds hers in the half dark hallway. There's no reluctance, no resistance just an open door and closed eyes and warmth in spite of winter. She's peppermint and unreal and he tries harder to grasp the ghost that's always haunted them, knowing this would be easy but never simple. Their lips together are silent sincerity in a deep gentle unfaltering embrace. More and mutual, his stubble scraping is painful perfection until he draws back abruptly, catching his breath.

House's hand has an almost paternal grip on her upper arm and he presses her forward into the shadow of his throat. He smells like the solstice, an instant, and she knows this will be the longest night of the year.

Feeling the bevel of the key in her tightly clutched hand, Cuddy opens her eyes, lashes batting against his chest. Then she pulls back, shaking her head in shock more than denial. It came like this again, it was your own fault, how far back, when it all started. It came like this again and every second the burden of tearing herself away from them together, from this, is heavier and more impossible.

House is right and she resents the way he always is when it matters. The now that they're living is intangible, invisible but it's all they have between them. An impossible now, it feels like a defeat. But if she stops it from being a defeat, walks away and goes home to the hospital, it's still not a victory. Then it's just nothing.

Cuddy has to make a choice. House is here, but her baby is still at the hospital. Already, she has to shed the guise of mother, leave a part of herself behind and forget about now so that she can remember then–––– remember him before he was a fifty year old specter in her doorway on New Year's Eve, before he was her best doctor, before he was ever anything more than a friend.

She has to fall in love again.

And she does, staring into his eyes as he studies her, the blue making a promise she knows he can't keep. They both feel it.

They're running out of time.

Poised on tips of toes she rises, and with another kiss confesses everything that's been unrequited for so long. The door closes and locks. A threshold's crossed–––––between the moment that they can deny needing this and the moment that nothing in the world can stop it from happening.

All constraint vanishes so suddenly that neither sees it coming and neither knows exactly what to do next. She's leading him high on the rush of spontaneity, feeling nineteen again, dragging her nails down the leather lapels of his jacket until a finger bends into the belt loop of his jeans and she's pulling and kissing and hoping she never has to let go.

They're in the bedroom before they realize what they're doing. Mouths married, his hair is soft under her palm. The lobe of his ear catches on her thumb and House leans on her to take the jacket off, then his arm is around her again, climbing under her shirt to the small of her bare back. He stops to smirk against her kiss when the clasp of her bra opens with a quick twist and sharp snap, adding persuasion to the urgency.

In an eager excited flurry of unbuttoning, unhooking and unzipping they undress, so ignorant to the absurdity that it transmutes into poetry. Cuddy sits on the edge of the bed and House hesitates, standing when he pulls down his boxerbriefs. But she turns the light out and reaches to take his hand.

It's warm and perfect, palm to palm. Sixteen and still clutching onto saccharine prospects, a husband and a child and a happily ever after–––––that was the last time holding hands meant something. Tonight it simply means she's not alone.

Cuddy lets go and lays down but House is still holding on and the motion throws him off balance. He falls to the bed, heavy and on top of her. There's just enough light to see the silhouette of a bashful smile across his face, almost apologetic.

He kisses her quickly in the awkward position, a few toes still on the floor, one arm under her and the other struggling free to let his thumb coast across her cheek. The next kiss transmits and he opens his eyes to watch her, marveling at the ageless beauty beneath him. That's the true miracle this Christmas, that somehow she's still the same.

Adjusting, he frames her between his elbows and kisses her softly, a whisper that lets her reconsider. Cuddy's hand rakes through his hair, deepening her consent and in a transitory prescient instant, he knows how this all will end.

His lips relieve the tension in her neck, gliding to her shoulder and then burying his nose between her breasts, letting his tongue stroke over each nipple. Descending still, his fingers trace her ribs as his lips reach her hips. He stops and gazes contemplative at the pale contours under his palms, the illusion of fragility. They find sustenance in each other's strength, dueling and disagreeing but even exposed and under him, she could never be weak.

A few of his fingers part her folds and his mouth soon follows. He flicks his tongue across all the sensitive spots she would have thought he'd forgotten, but tonight he wants to recapitulate, not repeat. The headboard hits hard against the wall when Cuddy arches her back. Slick and swollen against his tongue, he savors the flavor tasting mint and spring rain, the salt of tears he never saw shed.

A paradox, the tenderness of his presence and the piercing pleasure it triggers. Every nerve, vessel and membrane feels the emphasis of his mouth, making her toes curl as she squirms, struggling not to scream. She's close when his fingers start spiraling and the pressure of his tongue almost breaks her. But he retreats and before she can protest he's kissing her thigh, keeping his lips there and wondering why they waited so long for this––––if she has been planning and plotting the way he has––––– to one day again nestle, nibble, fondle, diddle, cuddle, couple and consummate.

In his touch she reclaims all of the delicacy and desire that's been so removed from her life. Her hips lift, an invitation to continue his oral exploration but he stays there, still curious, tilting his head against the bend of her knee, sighing and deciding to set a slower pace.

House rises, anxious and hard between her spread thighs, languidly pressing his lips to her chin, her collarbone, her temple until she tips her head back and he can see cerulean sadness, the curl of her bangs attempting to conceal it. He blows the errant ebony out of her eyes and without a word tells her that she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, more phantom truth than passing opinion. When he sees her he sees himself, that's never changed. She is the part of him that he's the most afraid of losing.

After a meditative pause their mouths meet again and Cuddy knows why he's drawing it out. The slowness isn't arousal dulled from years of opiate abuse, but reparations for every insult, every offense, every wasted word that should have been this––––a kiss.

Lithe in the throes of long repressed passion stoked by weeks of stalking and years of lying in wait, she rolls her hips, grinding her own wet heat against the solid length of him. Her fingers are laced tight behind his neck and his beard is burning with every probing, penetrative kiss, building toward bliss. But her eyes are shut and he wants her to see him, to see her seeing him. The corporeal reconnection is meaningless without eye contact.

"Open you eyes," he confides on a wisp of startled air.

When she does she sees love concentrating with ineffable intention on her. It's unrelenting, this illusion of escaping eternity that she can only experience when they're like this, equal and exposed and about to come together. The revival of this love is what they've wanted the entire time and now with a quiet shift and fluid thrust, they're one.

Beyond adrenaline or endorphins or serotonin, this isn't chemical or scientific but a dangerously surreal sense of completion. House feels alive and unbroken for first time in a long time. It's the end of yen and yearning and fulfillment like nothing else, to be with her, to be in her, to believe in forever.

Braced on his arms, his left leg is straining but each thrust is precise, shallow and reminiscent. This is the girl. The one who made him. The one who saved him. A resurrection, their resolution.

Love and fear coalesce and evanesce as he moves in her, strong and confident, his entire frame tense with pain and raw with palpable perseverance. Achingly inescapable, he traces her lips with his tongue, panting into her mouth and when he finally kisses her she wants to say it. Cuddy's choking on the three words, she knows this could be the last chance to mean it. But she can't. I love you is lost in a lingering shudder, a supine sigh. She's too afraid to say it and not hear it. To love him is to risk not being loved in return and she's not ready to know the truth. She's not ready to forfeit what they have for a four letter word.

They're making love because they can't say it.

But it translates, as her hand drifts down his back, settling into the sweaty dip of his spine. He knows she loves him, even if she can never say it.

House surges forward, desperate to make this more than a conspiracy of bodies exploiting an imprudent impulse. Life flares high in both of them and in a bold, sublime feat he lifts one of her legs, slinging it over his shoulder, lunging deep enough to hit her cervix, smothering her with his mouth and his injured gravity. Seeking a torrid syncopation, he overestimates and loses leverage. House feels like he's doing this _to _ her and not _with_ her. His right leg falters and the rift, the rut, the scar grazes hollow against her leg. His breath hitches, suddenly and sickeningly aware of his handicap.

The chasm could have been cauterized, the war wound healed years ago, but it took too long to forgive and the damage is permanent, the hurt perpetual. The shape and texture of the hairless depression is too much. She's seen it but nobody has touched it in years. House feels his weight, his age, his exhaustion now, more conscious than ever of his time of life. The man who doesn't believe in limits, who ignores boundaries and breaks rules, can't cross this line. He turns his head away and sees the nursery across the hall. Then he sinks––––– this isn't just the end of the year, it's the end of everything as it's ever been.

The advent of adoption and dim yellow clarity, he sees the woman under him isn't the same girl he fell in love with decades ago, she's grown. She's got a girl of her own and this is another farewell, finality and futility and no different than Ann Arbor.

Feigning pain, he rolls onto his back. But it's more fate than fatigue. He doesn't want this to be it, one night or a last time, before she trades her body and career for complacent parenthood. House wants to be here when the clock strikes twelve, to commence the new year with a kiss and with her. But now he doesn't even know if he can continue, let alone stay.

The snow is falling, burying the street, the sidewalk, the world outside her window and this moment alive. Alabaster moonlight slants to illuminate each individual flake. Cuddy's clouded and empty at his side and after a minute she turns to see his placid profile looking out at the cold cobalt sky, the room pitch black and punctuated by the sound of their rapid breathing. She rests her head on his shoulder and splays a hand across his chest, letting her index finger fall into his suprasternal notch. The contrast of the warm sighing gusts from the furnace and bitter winter wind blur into a lullaby of the last night of the year.

Intuitively, his arm curls around her and they're close again. The doubt recedes and the regret regresses and suddenly it all makes sense.

_Midnight. I'm waiting.__  
I love you.  
Lisa _

The note, a self-fulfilled prophecy. Twenty years she's been waiting for tonight. Cuddy's always loved him and it's almost tragic, because he can't remember the last time a woman told him it as a truth.

The wait is over, she has what she wants. She's the boss with a baby and he doesn't belong anymore. Midnight's close and so much is at stake, House settles for this, the scent of her perfume and the shade of her eyes before he kisses them and hides under the sheets.

Inhaling, he tucks her closer, resting his chin on the top of her head. Cuddy kisses his chest, her nose sinking into the hollow of his throat. He hasn't showered since early yesterday, she thinks, and his skin exudes masculinity, a subtle salt and a hint of cologne just below his sandpaper jaw. She won't have time to wash the sheets after tonight and her bed will smell like him for weeks. For weeks she'll sleep with him every night, adding sensory authenticity to the memory, to all of the memories of laying beside him, quiet and comfortable.

Resisting the lull of a December night drowse, she brushes her fingers against the grain of the hair just below his axilla. Then skims her thumb down his torso, rubbing small circles into his stomach and letting her fingers creep lower. Resting a cradled palm over his still hot, still hard shaft, she moves down his body, kissing his knee as she peels off the last thing he's wearing, one white sock. House's feet aren't cold and she knows that's as close to self disclosure that she'll ever get from him. Acceptance is a concession, the incommunicable made carnal.

It's enough to hope for transcendence, for the ecstatic explosion, the euphoric rescue, utopia in a queen sized bed. The goal of lovemaking and the universe, now she wants more than instantaneous elation. The secret lies in the relationship between slowness and memory, speed and forgetting.

The only thrill is the unforgettable and tonight they will move toward tomorrow with indolent intensity.

Prolonging the suspense with the pace he's set, she straddles him, lying prostrate and purring, the hair on his chest rasping rough against her nipples. House pushes up colliding pelvis to pelvis and Cuddy gasps at the feel of him sliding slow and firm between her labia. His arms around her are a homecoming. Held and kissing and cognizant of the surreal space between movements, she writhes closer, the motion full of turbulence and expectation, restraint and blind faith.

It builds to an apex as she arches, tilting her hips and coming too close to recombining. His hands roam across her back crawling lower until his fingers dig into each porcelain cheek with a frustrated groan. It's hard holding back when unhinging would be so effortless. But tonight the mission is more than the pursuit of pleasure, it's the protection of their love, possession of each other, salvation in the sweet slowness of sexual resolution.

Adductive revival, the energy and attraction is polarized, magnetic emotion. Survival in spite of everything that's at stake, her breath humid against his closed eyes is the incarnation of their intimacy. Then she's lifted, weightless, easing down onto him and they're one again, balanced and breathless.

Unconditional and almost sentimental, the synchrony of reunion. Cuddy's eyes flutter shut, her toes tingling as she stretches along the length of his body, adjusting to the fulfillment of feeling him deep inside of her.

The gentle, deliberate rise and fall as she rides him is her control, her choice and this is what House wanted, her making love to him. Committed to memory but not compromise he sways his hips, rebelling against her rhythm, broaching speed just to relent.

Cadence is a pulse, passionate absorption, beautiful persistence, evoking invincibility, happiness. Joy. Pumping and rocking, locked and clutching, they see each other and surrender only to what they remember. He jerks and juts and bucks watching as the irresistibility of release rises, the shape of her mouth a revelation. "I love you, " House wants to say and maybe he does in between 'God' and 'beautiful' and a low whispered 'Lise.' Then the moment rushes forth and waits, the moment to conceive change, to cross the border between misery and bliss, reality and rapture.

They're caught in a fragment of time severed from both the past and the future, wrenched from the continuity of their lives, outside of chronology, in a state of ecstasy, not aware of age, worries, responsibilities––––there's no fear now because the source of fear is the future and they're finally freed of the future.

The tordid momentum segues into simultaneity, they're lips struggling to touch, eyes straining to stay open. His sweaty palms reaching erratically a second before are calm, caressing each curve, holding on as they let go.

Searing heat spills out of him and into her, the slow flow an effusion of souls, the ceding of control and the manifestation of meaning. The impact of cathartic oblivion precedes the fleeting and profound sense of possibility, a deafening awareness in the echoes of each other's orgasm. Betrothed biology and relentless duration, the reckless reunion is reverberation without repercussion, love realized and recognized, passion repeated.

A dream made reality, the unattainable captured and contracting, clenching and kissing; like time itself, it passes.

Cuddy collapses, still connected, in the arms of her lover who doesn't feel depleted, empty or spent but whole and home, with her. House kisses her forehead and smoothes his hands down her body until she relaxes completely, limp and defenseless.

Christmas lights from across the street are painting the room in blinking intervals, spectral ephemera of the season. A season of change and a reason to rejoice. Cuddy's drowsy and heavy on him and aware of it, shifting her weight.

They're two people again, a portent. House knows this will only happen once. But still, this is their twice. When his mind realizes that he's comfortable, content it tries to revolt but his body won't let it. He wants to, needs to, but can't let go. Cuddy breathes softly into his mouth as she kisses him one last time before resting an ear on his chest and thinking how it all worked out, somehow, after she'd given up on it. House's arms unfold but she's closer now and he wonders if she can hear the beat of his heart, if the weight of her there will break it, leaving only the shattered pieces, and her, in his arms.

Slowly she falls asleep. Smiling, his mind is passive, senses tempted into a trance. His toes rustle beneath the sheets, restless. He could still leave but yawns instead. The room is dark, warm and wide open and nothing like he remembers from thirteen years before. There's one light, a clock.

11:59

It's the end of a month, the end of a year. She has what she wants and he's still here. This beginning will be the end of their beginning. House falls asleep aware not of the transition but only the fact that he is here with her, that in some way he always has been.

And that maybe, he was always meant to be.


	4. Surrogacy

This volume will have shorter chapters, by request. But the plot perpetually thickens, so read closely.  
Thank you! Please review.

* * *

_**volume ii (maternity)**_

**IV. Surrogacy**

Mother means sacrifice.

More than a word or a title assigned to a reproductive participant, it bestows the honor, the burden, the blessing of another life upon the selfless unsuspecting woman willing to immolate her own.

Maternity is the opposite of paternity. It is truth elevated from lies, love above law, transcending genetics, gestation and labor, maternity is more than biology.

It is destiny.

Today Lisa Cuddy will accept her destiny, she will finalize her foster care and bring her baby home.

She will become a mother.

_**pendulum, perpetuated**_

The first day of the year will be the last like this, House thinks, blissful to be by her side, brooding content about this morning after. Bathed in a pool of the white soft light that steals upon half sleep, Cuddy is facing him, withdrawing from the dream that was New Year's Eve.

He's analyzing her. Her reaction to reality, her hair mussed and tangled, the shift in her perspective when their eyes finally meet––––part ultimatum, part invitation, it is, to their mutual relief, not a first glance of regret.

Satisfaction shapes across her face and House yawns, surprised that she's not yelling at him and attempting to gauge what he can get away with.

A synonym for surreal, the moment his cold nose nudges her hair away to breathe against her neck and run his lips down her arm. On his left side, they align and he can almost ignore the agony of muscle missing, tell himself that this makes up for it. His lips elevate and his gaze deviates, knowing what he'll see before he looks.

The sight of her this morning that means everything is like surgery––––– just by lying here, by wanting him, she's sawing through his breastbone and cracking open his ribs, altering the anatomy of his heart with a dull knife, transplanting hope and happiness, holding the malformed bleeding weight, his life, in her hands.

They're balanced perfection, in a state of such stable composure that he hesitates to cross the sunlit space between them and mar the symmetry. Better than any distraction, she's an addiction and right now she's his. He knows she won't be much longer when he lays a hand on her hip and lets it drift higher, trying to hide how easy it is to smile as he traces the soft curve of her breast. Cuddy's nails rake down his abdomen, combing through hair until House impetuously lifts the comforter, leaving them cocooned captives enclosed in cream colored sheets. He kisses her, just kisses her, a slow scalding kiss, melting once and for all the eternal ice of doubt with the calm certainty of cotton seclusion.

Their sequestered sequel, sunk in pillowy insulation, starts. Shining warm, the light is filtered, pale, ambient illumination. Cuddy inches closer, kissing his chin and letting her cheek coast across the extra day's worth of stubble. Her ankle twists around his and she lifts her other leg so that it's high over his thigh wrapping around his waist, the curl of their bodies a circle complete.

Surgery and symmetry, the corresponding shapes of their bodies fusing are like sutures binding their souls. House shifts until he's inside her, shallow and still, resisting the temptation to drive deeper and about to suffocate under the covers. He throws the sheet down with a panicked inhalation and looks at her, silhouetted by the flickering glitter not of a snow buried barren winter day but of the sea, alive on a summer night.

The ocean, her eyes, he kisses them then thrusts, rocking rapt and feeling Cuddy's fists clench tight behind his back. Connected they're comfortable and it's not the intimacy, it's the backstory. The years, the pain, their history is their passion.

House sways slow and she meets his movement until it's inertia incarnate, two bodies and a singular momentum––––– the pendulum they've perpetuated for so long keeping time and gravity close but progress impossible.

It's still unreal, erotic reverie this early. They swing, in cadent synchrony and his hand trembles where he's still touching her, right where their bodies are joined.

An aural tactile pulse, the motion is like a metronome maintaining their tantric tempo. He plays the dampened strings of her instrument in delicate, long elliptical strokes until the middle C of ecstasy is strummed square and resonant. Cuddy sighs and quivers and he kisses her, but the first orgasm is only an overture.

The frictionless pivot and kinetic collision has her writhing in his arms, teeth sinking into his shoulder. Energy and equilibrium, trust more than lust, this is what it's always been. Cuddy's fingers mold into the tension, her breath says slow but she wants him hard and deep and defiant. And he interrupts the rhythm, jutting quick and rapid toward resuscitation, harmonic acceleration.

With each fluid lunge she pulls him closer, rolling her hips while his tongue lingers in the corner of her lips. Swollen and soaking into the sheets, she tips her head back and he breathes humid against the nape of her neck until her muscles start to clutch around him again. Her eyes meet his, an almost unrecognizable blue, his first conception of change. They're different and the same and it doesn't matter because now there's no logic, no reason, no time or trouble, just warmth, just want.

House can feel the shape of his name on her lips when she kisses him and it's too much to be Greg again, the finality of repeated completion. Surrendering to the the end of the pursuit, this is alleviation, the cure for every unanswered question.

High and desperate he hisses the single syllable of her first name and shudders as she contracts, her kiss a silent gasp. The stream of heat spilling out of him is a rush of relief more than release, an affinity above physiology, consolation in waking and having her be the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes. This is all he's ever wanted–––––– to come together without consequence, quiet and alive in the diffused aesthetic of drowsy daylight.

It's endless, the intensity, the tangibility of holding truth and love and knowing this is the only one, if just for an exalted instant, the moment destined to be a memory and never more.

Heaving, exhausted, he holds her until Cuddy closes her eyes and collapses into the pillow. A hand brushes her hair away from her face, her lips glossed with his kiss curve into a smile, affirmation almost.

"Good morning," he says, serenely smug and as soft as the goodnight that started all of this weeks ago.

"Mmm," is all she can manage, speechless, her soul suddenly struck shy.

A beat. Or to be more precise a transitionary emotional silence, like the imperceptible modulation that moves a sonata from one key to the next, transference in hushed stillness. He watches, he wonders.

"Why did you keep it?" House asks.

"What?"

"The shirt, why did you keep it all these years?"

"I don't know.

I found it when I was moving the spare room furniture to the attic, for the nursery.  
It was in the back of a drawer," she yawns.

'Beside the party pants,' he thinks of saying. Then House realizes it's been there for years, stored away for the preservation of recollection. Or hidden for the sake of omitting a rainy day in May.

A remnant, it remains, like him, torn and tired and out of place in her space. He's an anomaly, an unfamiliar presence in her bed, but he belongs. The spill of her hair across her shoulder, the tepid spread of her hand over his chest, he wants to wake up everyday with her. More, he wants to have waken up every day since he first saw her, like this. The memory of her in his arms in a twin sized bed two decades ago and now an overwhelming desire to see her in that shirt, House wants to start over, to start the same somehow.

"What time is it?" Cuddy asks, abruptly more awake. She reaches and turns the clock to face her. Her pupils dilate from the time.

"No, no, no..."

Leaping out of bed, she searches for clothes and starts to dress.

"I'm late for a meeting with my lawyer to finalize my foster care and get counseled about the adoption process," she starts to say more but assumes he doesn't care and silences her excitement.

House rubs his eyes and sighs, feeling like she owes him something, like she's his wife and has just demoted their nuptials to a one night stand. By the time he suppresses his frustration, she's dressed––––in a skirt and not the shirt–––––and clasping pearls behind her neck. Cuddy leans over him, reaching, and he holds his breath because he thinks she's about to kiss him goodbye, to interrupt her routine of getting ready every morning alone. But she just picks up her watch and rushes out without a word or a warning and the fact that he's disappointed, that he expected, or worse, hoped for anything else, leaves him almost acceptant in a sullen melancholia. It wasn't a transplant after all, it was another alternative to amputation, the debribement of a dying muscle.

Taken by the woman who never saw the defect. Taken, he knows, not last night or this morning but years ago.

Cuddy's always had his heart, only now he wishes he could tell her.

But she's gone so he rucks the sheets around any exposed skin, determined not to shiver and settling into the cold side of the pillow with a stiff neck. It doesn't feel the same as before because thirteen years ago he ran away. Staying feels significant, but alone it's just suffering.

Turning his head he pouts at her pillowprint then takes a deep breath into it, finding the fragrance of her shampoo and perfume and slept in morning musk. He tries to sleep but can't. House tumbles out of the bed an hour later, pouring the pills into his hand before he stands. He swallows and dresses, kneading his knuckles into the indent of scar tissue, the unforgiving void that atones for their perpetual unresolution.

The bathroom is violet and impeccably clean. House raids her medicine cabinet finding Midol, toothpaste and tampons. There's baby lotion and chamomile bathwash on the edge of the basin. The metamorphosis that is motherhood marches on, even when she's gone he thinks, peeing on her toilet seat and lumbering uneven as he zips.

Canvasing Cuddy's abode, he wanders with premeditated aimlessness. There is evidence he doesn't want to find, like the nipples aligned along her kitchen sink or the pantry full of formula, and jars of baby food she won't need for months, if ever.

Part of him suspects she won't be able to sustain even a semblence of sanity, running a hospital and raising a baby. She will have to sacrifice one for the other and he can't see Cuddy quitting her job, even temporarily. At Ann Arbor, her ambition defined her, today she is what she does. Dean of Medicine will always be far more appealing to her than mother goose.

That's his theory at least.

It's not like she's incapable. Cuddy could conquer the world if she wanted but adoption is still an obstacle. Doubt reigns and as he lurks in the nursery, House knows she loves this baby as much as he knows he doesn't belong here.

And he turns toward a mournful freedom, to be alone again.

As he limps to his bike, he regrets forgetting his cane and stammers into a puddle, the struggle soaking through to his socks. The sun has already melted his footprints from last night, a transient tragedy, sex or snow, now it's like it never happened.

But it's a brighter discontent, for no reason he can name, yet.

-

The nadir of the new year's apex is the clinic. House arrives late, walking into an exam room without a patient, locking the door and hoping to take a nap. Ignoring clinic duty forces patients to complain, they complain to the dean, the dean finds him and in her confrontation of his responsibility, he will confront hers.

But the best laid plans can be predictable and more, easily ignored. So when most of the day passes without seeing her, he decides to do his job.

The plethora of patients he treats in an hour peak on the stupidity meter––––colds crotch rot, inanimate objects lodged in various orifices. A teen comes in for a pregnancy test and he educates her about the miracle of conception, assuring the girl, who is in fact not pregnant, that sperm can survive inside a woman's body for four or five days and proceeding to prescribe the birth control pill.

The door shuts with an empty echo. He thinks about Cuddy and eclampsia, boys riding bareback and why it all had to intersect.

-

Lulled into legality, Cuddy learns that the baby's family still has time to change their mind and that she does also. Contritely, she's told not to be

unnecessarily concerned that the biological family could return to claim the child; once the court finalizes the legal termination of parental rights, upon adoption, the they can never return to claim the child. A clock ticks and she wonders if she's been waiting for it or running against it. There's a little relief as her attorney adds that the ASFA has imposed stricter time limits on reunification efforts. But the anxiety recoils when she's warned about the DHHS inspection in a week.

She returns to her office after a light lunch of fear and confusion, with the constant expectation of her lover diagnostician's intrusion.

At the end of the day, the gray sun sets and his shadow slants through glass. House limps in and initiates.

"You are avoiding me. Which can only lead me to believe that unlike your other recent decisions, last night was not a mistake. "

"Last night..." She starts.

"Last night was last night. And today's today."

"Today started the way last night ended. They could be connected."

"I'm taking Rachel home," she reminds, knowing he's right.

He stands for a minute, acknowledging the orphan's name.

"Nothing's changed, House. You're still you, damaged, with all of your emotionally anesthetized cynicism and I'm still me––––––with all of my desperate administrative need. Last night it just all came to a head."

"Actually, it didn't––––" He starts to add sarcastically but she cuts him off.

"You don't really want me. You're just afraid you're losing me to someone else who can't walk. The whole thing is a mistake," she finishes, forgetting to add 'you think,' but rebuffs:

"You want nothing to do with a baby." As a force of habit, he almost disagrees.

Instead House walks away because he knows he can't stay, he can't say that maybe, he does.

The dissonance in their dialogue keeps House from confronting her with the truth, that yes, she wants a new life at the center of hers but that she wants a man and not a newborn. Both maybe, but not one without the other.

'You don't want a baby, you want me,' is arrogant even for him. But it's true. Thinking the man she loves, the only one she's ever wanted will never change, will remain as unattainable as the campus legend she fell for before it got this complicated, Cuddy settled for a fraction of what she wanted.

This kismet is a compromise, less than the destiny she deserves.

_**putative parents**_

Three strange days of casual diversion pass. Cuddy's home most of the time and Wilson seems distracted, or sad, so nobody suspects.

The irony of eluding suspicion never receives self-applause. House dwells on the details and wonders if she was right, if it's only the fear of losing her that made him act, if he really doesn't want her anymore now than any day before.

What they have is an almost parasitic dependence on each other. It's uncanny resemblance to marriage is making him reconsider their roles. He owes her nothing, but a part of him wants to be with her, even if being with her means becoming a putative father. And husband.

John raised him under the same pretense, lying to himself. He had to have known that he wasn't his biological father but chose to believe the lie, to deny the truth until the lie became the truth. John stayed in spite of the deception. Can House do the same? Is he willing to perpetuate this sort of inherited impostor paternity?

It's pragmatism more than principles. Everybody lies, that's not the problem. If he stays in Cuddy's life as anything more than the caustic crippled pillar of her hospital there would be the risk that Rachel will one day be like him–––– hate this man who isn't really her dad, maybe even the woman who isn't really he mom.

They would both be pretender parents, scientists with no genetic connection to their pretend progeny. To stand by Cuddy now means, however unwittingly, becoming the fraudulent father he despised, whose death left him unaffected and whose role he was predestined to reprise, ensuring that Rachel never knows her real father and be denied an identity the same way he was.

The leg made it overt, but House has never been whole.

With Cuddy he's always known who he is: the doctor exasperating the dean, friends, lovers, alumni. Now he wants to be more, he just doesn't know if she'll let him.

-

Four more days go by, with Cuddy a captive to colicky. Babysitters have come and gone, the inspection passes and when the calm comes after the chaos it is a doubtful repose. She's had Rachel for a week, she should feel happy, amazed, fulfilled. They should be closer but there's no connection. She misses the hospital and wonders if House was right, if this was all a mistake. Teetering between maternity and administration, she's too exhausted to think anymore about how this baby isn't really hers.

In the morning she goes to work, feeling guilty only about the absence of guilt for leaving her daughter home with the housekeeper. The bond will come, Wilson tells her, wait and see but it's too early for complacency and her coffee is too bitter, acerbic in her stomach and she spits it out, spilling some on the desk when she throws the cup in the trash. A baby wipe is close and the caffeine doesn't stain but she misdiagnoses the burning corrosion in her abdomen as her conscience.

The next week wanes with the days hidden in the hospital and every night sleepless, rocking her baby girl, humming lullabies and hoping the skepticism in her parental self diminishes. Ruling with a different radiance, an almost moribund phosphorescence, Cuddy constantly questions if there's really a maternal bone in her body, if she acted on a whim, with emotions and not objectivity, if this person she's responsible for is only an alternative to being alone, the occupant of the ever-empty space.

When she makes it home Friday to a bawling baby, she feeds, burps, juggles dirty diapers and Rachel does fall asleep, but not before spitting up and making mommy dean of medicine sacrifice another blouse. Cuddy goes to change and opens a drawer to find the JHU shirt is on top. The idealism of their unscarred youth she stares at and reflects. From ambitious med student to reigning over all the other doctors, she knows how far she's come. With a baby she's now had every privilege, all the success she aspired to except to give herself unconditionally and unselfishly to another human being.

Her biggest fear now is that what she wants, she can never have–––– except to hold the faded memory of abandon in her hands. And that what she has, finally, peacefully asleep in the nursery she painted yellow, she doesn't want.

The dilemma of adoption rarely relents but when it does, House is all she can think of. Ignorance and distraction have kept the vivid closure of their New Year's tryst dim but far from extinguished the last two weeks. No matter how much she tries to deny it, he is the one; the right, the wrong, the only one.

In the past, whether she was dating or hibernating, House was always in the back of her head leaving her love life indefinitely on hold. Waiting for him, she's inadvertently sabotaged every relationship she's ever had out of the hope that he might change. Now Cuddy's had him, again, and knows the danger of admitting it, but the want is too much.

Shivering on her doorstep, holding her at midnight, kissing her the first morning of the year–––––– it's as close to romance as she's come in a long time. It made her loneliness feel less fatal and subdued her fear of the uncertain future. With him, she felt like anything was possible. Even if it was a false sense of security, even if he'll never settle.

Bearing only a heavy heart broken by loss, she doesn't even know if House retains the capacity to love again.

Or to love her.

_**sacrifice's surrogate**_

Waking late but rested with the tshirt still clasped in her hands, Cuddy shuffles off to work, a layer of nausea coating her empty stomach. Resolved to be a single, satisfied parent, she straps Rachel into the carseat, kisses her forehead and feels something new, something different, the priceless gratification of protector, rescuer, mother.

The parental epiphany is a transition, moving her more than all the money spent on stuffed animals, monitors and bibs, more than all the papers signed, more than any moment before. Motherhood commences with this kiss and it may mean sacrificing sanity, sanctuary, her life as she knows it, but in that instant is seems like a small concession. She saved a life, her baby, Rachel is her daughter. It finally feels real.

The sublime awareness that she has what she wants, the job of her dreams and a life to foster a comes as she drives, an inexplicable smile shaping because she knows it's enough.

House is still hers, no matter the distance or static between them. A professional possession as much as a liability, she will always love the man but never admit it. They've walked the tight rope on a razor's edge for years. The only difference now is that when he disappoints her, when can't open up, when he pushes, turns, runs away, she'll have someone at home waiting for her, someone who depends on her, someone who will never leave her.

Winter will end and the doubt will disappear. She'll sign the papers to finalize the adoption and fill the realm of her life that's always been vacant. The thought comforts her as she parks, the weight of worry lifted. Cuddy knows this is what she's supposed to do and nothing can change her mind, not even House.

-

The day is spent with her daughter and behind her desk and for the first time, it feels natural. The sense of impending failure has faded and she thinks, maybe it won't be so impossible to balance the elements of her life that almost make her happy.

Almost, she knows because House has diagnosed her as terminally miserable, proud of what she's accomplished, petrified of what she wants. This is happiness without complacency, incomplete enough to speculate still about a better day but shining bright enough to be appreciated.

-

In an effort to put an end to the awkward avoidance, House walks into her office uninvited and at the end of the day.

"You," pointing his cane at her.

"...are avoiding me," he annunciates, just for the deja vu.

"Come here," Cuddy placidly commands.

House walks over to the side of her desk and sees Rachel in the carrier tugging on Cuddy's pant cuff.

"You're keeping her," he murmurs to himself.

It was never really a question. He's been paying attention, hoping she would see this was too much. Suspecting her evasion and absence were because of their accident, he thought she knew. Now he thinks he was wrong.

Rachel is in his hands before House can protest and he examines her pink cheeks and tiny nose. Putatively paternal, he imagines the misconception, and can see the heartbeat in his hands passing in appearance for Cuddy's kid.

Theirs if this goes anywhere.

He wants to tell her, he has to, but Cuddy is beaming with a justified pride, smiling at the sight of sharing this joy with her touchstone, a friend and he can't spoil it with words. When he goes to hand the baby back to her, she stands, her palm rising to her head as she staggers, almost collapses, dizzy and faint. House stares at her a moment, analyzing interrogatively concerned.

"It's nothing, I'm tired," Cuddy says, sitting down again and reaching for Rachel.

Her veneer of verisimilitude is thin and House doesn't believe it. Maybe he was right. Maybe he should tell her.  
Maybe she already knows.

"Cuddy, I know you're..."

Then he struggles to see her from a separate perspective. She's sacrifice's surrogate, surrendering happiness for other's success. She's endured, forfeited and lost so much because of him, because of everybody she's let herself love, he can't steal this moment with his cynicism, his curiosity, his precision. So he sits silent, lets his left foot slide to hers and hopes it stays this simple.

His sneaker shifts when her office door opens abruptly. The moment comes too soon and unexpected––––––tragedy, biology, a blonde boy on the threshold.

Paternity.

Simon, and she's holding what he wants.


	5. Legitimacy

Short chapter, some people saw this one coming but I promise nothing else will be predictable. Also, while waiting for updates, check out my oneshot "Beautiful Lie" it has few hits & few reviews & it will distract you.

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Please, please review! Thanks for reading.

* * *

**V. Legitimacy**

Mother means sacrifice.

For Lisa Cuddy it means the sacrifice of maternity itself. Except she's no Stella Dallas, she's a doctor. A doctor conceding her baby to a boy who hasn't even finished high school.

Defeated by biology, again, the cruelty of deja vu, of an accidental parent's indecision was like a scalpel serrating her soul and she could do little more than sink in the sorrow, drowning in the painful torpor of repetition.

Rachel was a specimen, a hostage in her office, for a negotiation that would once again negate everything. There could be no compromise, the child is his, and she wavered the entire time wondering if this was the wrong decision. The revelation of realizing it was right came too late. Simon has a family, parents he hesitated to tell and who want their granddaughter.

_**family law**_

Wading through the snow in open toed heels, Cuddy looks professional but not maternal. Her head is bowed, tears frozen, heart broken. The gray limestone of the courthouse blurs into its rusticated ground floor and heavy hardwood doors as she strides slow, staring at the flakes burying her feet and finally stepping inside.

The hearing is a formality. The nursery has been empty for days, and Cuddy already misses the echo of colicky. Above her is a translucent dome made of green glass, no God, no sunlight. The dome's spandrel panels are covered with mosaics––––– eagles and shields with stars and stripes. No caduceus or staff of Asclepius, no science, just law.

Law that will deem her adopted maternity illegitimate.

The reverberation of each step brings her closer to collapse as she gets lost in the legal labyrinth. She's been in judicial chambers dozens of times, most of them because of House and therefore _with_ him. But now she's alone, completely and for what feels like forever.

Wilson offered to come, with all his platitudes about trying again. Pity is the last thing she needs standing beside her. Even her lawyer is indifferently apathetic. House wouldn't be kind, but he would at least be honest, if she had asked him to come.

Keeping him at a distance has been a way of justifying her own inability to connect. She's projected her dysfunction onto him to the point where they can anticipate the moment before emotional evacuation. Regret is all she has now, for never appreciating his presence, however annoying it may be.

So she stands before a bench, swallowing a scream and staring at the black robe and gavel, certain there is no justice in this place. Cuddy's told in a dry, monotone, withering voice that a foster to adopt home should be willing to accept legal risk placements, that there was no termination of paternal rights and that this scenario was always a possibility.

"The imperative of the state is to reunite the family if at all possible. In most cases, this means visitation with the birth parents with the goal of eventual reunion but because the father's parents are willing to claim custody until their son is able, this hearing is to finalize reunification."

A signature ends her attempt. She'd gone in telling herself she would appeal, but the court only hears appeals once a year, and she'd never win, not against the flesh and blood and family of the girl who is no longer Rachel, the stability of the two- parent household, not against her fate. Years of IVF, two tries at adoption, Cuddy feels as if she's destined to be denied a baby. Walking back out into the cold, she knows there must be some unbreakable law, written when she was too young and selfish to amend it, a law forbidding her from having a family, even an incomplete one.

And it's her own fault, doubt turned into hubris and hope failed her. It was all just another emotionally intense, legally complex defeat. She was just a surrogate, a third party in a reproductive coincidence. Her second glance at parenthood ends in a blizzard of bereavement. It was no miracle. She's just a doctor, meant to save the child but not raise her.

Still, as she returns to her empty silent home, Cuddy's not entirely resigned. Angry, depressed and the sun has already set. But she's not committed to quitting. It's not hope that she has, but an option, an objective alternative.

She'd gotten off the pill before receiving final approval to adopt Joy. If she hadn't gotten approved, she would have tried one more round of IVF.

The living room is cold and dark, so she starts a fire, still wiping away tears but willing to try again, one day, maybe.

An hour later, the thick frost on her windows begins to thaw, a stream of pearls like winter weeping for her. Curled up in front of the fireplace, she starts to drowse off, her eyes bloodshot and lids heavy, determined to dream of the perfect spring, of birth and sunlight and a less lonely season.

A knock at her door, the same as before, wakes her. A wave of relief washes over her, at least this much has repeated. More than anything she wants to be kissed, to forget, to reconcile through pain. Lost, she wants him to find her again.

The streetlight backlighting him casts a halo and Cuddy almost smiles at the irony, an atheist her saving grace. Defying the unplowed roads on his motorcycle, everything about this is dangerous. House steps in and stands, without a word. She turns to look back at him, the glance closer than an embrace, more urgent than a call, it is all of her anguish and despair in a sad sapphire stare.

"She's gone," Cuddy says after a minute.

Afraid of coming too close, he just nods, knowing nothing he can say will change anything. Her voice rises again, hoarse and narrating between stifled sobs. He listens as she vents, weighing without judging. He's always loved her most like this, delicate, unguarded, less invincible than at work.

Once she's finished, when she wants him to agree or argue, at least acknowledge her, House still stands mute.

"No opinion? No sarcasm? No 'it was all a mistake anyway?'

What the hell are you trying to hide?"

After a moment she thinks, 'the future.'

"House, say something," she begs, wrapping her arms around him and turning her head into the shadow of his throat.

Run, his brain is telling him, neurons firing at gray matter like a cerebral duel. Run, but his body knows he can't so he stands paralyzed, arms at his sides as Cuddy hugs him tighter.

"It's better this way."

"What?"

"She should be with her father, " this truth and tragedy because his silent lie has to die soon and this has to come first.

"...even if he is a teenage boy stupid enough to ride bareback."

Cuddy pulls back and he can't look her in the eyes, she can't know he's deflecting.

What felt inevitable moments before is impossible, she wonders if it always was.

"You son of a bitch. Telling me I'd be a great mother, the kiss, new year's, that was all just so you didn't have to pay for it? You did it all just to sleep with me?

Now I've lost another baby and you're saying I deserve it?"

"No. I'm saying this is right, you have to know that–––––"

"Get out," she whispers low, breaking down and backing away.

House finally looks her in the eyes as he turns to leave. Already his misses the warmth of her against his chest. The ice on her steps reflects moonlight, the far away stars are fading, like every moment of his life worth living. He wants to go back, to tell her to hold on–––––––to him, not hope. He wants to shout that what he told her wasn't the whole truth. But he can only move forward, in the illusory straight line of life, suspecting more but knowing only one thing: he hurt her.

Amid renewed tumult, Cuddy cries until sleep comes, hating herself for expecting anything else from House. She wanted him to lie, to tell her everything would be all right, to stay. She wanted consolation in his company and all she got was honesty and vacancy. The promise of a life with a purpose has been broken and she knows it won't be the last time.

_**mourning sickness**_

The end of January chill shrouds her open eyes and every inch of her that's not under the covers. Before she can turn to see the time, she's on her feet, rushing for the bathroom and vomiting into the toilet, what little she ate yesterday. She rationalizes it as nerves, a sort of existential nausea induced by all recent events.

Then she brushes her teeth and gets in the shower. Steam surrounds her, the heat melting some of her grief. Her eyes burn and her head hurts and she's tired of feeling sorry for herself. Cuddy closes her eyes, tilting her face toward the downpour, wanting to be reborn. A strange epiphany seizes her suddenly when she frees her mind of the complexities of the past week. Her headache, her nausea, the fatigue and fever, they're connected.

Her hair is still wet when she hurries out into the late cold morning.

-

This aisle of the pharmacy she is familiar with. In preparation for each round of IVF, she bought an ovulation kit. After each insemination she came for a pregnancy test. Now she buys three, some ginger ale and a generic candy bar.

Smiling at the cashier, Cuddy smells of citrus and cocoanut and anxiety without an answer.

Soon she's home, catching a calendar for the first time this month and realizing she's eight days late. There's a redeeming legitimacy in the lack of blood. It isn't superstition, it's a sense of beauty that cures her depression and imbues her with a new will to live (and to love).

The time to mourn is over, the line between loss and revelation has been crossed, and by confirming it, she can never go back.

On the toilet she sits a long time, with a nervous and empty bladder. The phone is on the sink and she doesn't know who to call: House, Wilson, her mother or sister. Nobody knows everything she's been through. The adversity of infertility–––––being prodded and injected with cold metal and anonymous sperm, two agonizing adoption attempts–––––it's been almost five years of blighted hope. Now one night and a new year could finally end the emptiness.

-

"Why did you never have kids?" House asks, stealing Wilson's pudding.

Boy wonder oncologist chews his lunch and squints incredulously.

"You were married enough times, so the kid would have been legitimately conceived _in_ wedlock. And there's nothing needier than a parasite you name and feed and live with for eighteen years."

"Why are you asking me this now?"

"Because people think kids complete the puzzle, I'm just curious why you never believed it."

"Does this have anything to do with Cuddy?"

"Cuddy doesn't have a kid anymore, so no." A beat.

"I believed it," Wilson starts.

"My first marriage... I was too young to want them yet. And the others...  
I guess I just knew they would end, that I would do something to ruin it and I didn't want a kid in the middle of it."

"Prudent, rational. Do you only lie at lunch?

If I wake up early enough for breakfast one of these days will you tell me divorce isn't the inevitable outcome  
of every marriage? That as long as I love someone and cross my fingers I'll live happily ever after..."

"Fine. The truth is kids scare the hell out of me. Not other people's but the thought of my own gives me an arrhythmia.  
Why do you care anyway?"

"I don't," says House licking the spoon. But he's thinking of cat's in the cradle so he asks about a dog.

"How's Hector?"

And the conversation misdirects.

_**legitimacy**_

The store bought tests all say yes. Well, one has a plus sign, the other is blue and the third say 'pregnant.' Three for three, Cuddy finally goes to work, closing her office blinds quickly and heading for the bathroom to pee once more not on a plastic stick, but in a plastic cup. Under a pseudonym she sends it to the lab for a battery of routine tests, pregnancy among them.

Four's a few too many but she can already hear his cynicism about store bought tests. While she's waiting she tries to work but every time she steps out of her office the nurses and staff, knowing what she's lost, shoot her remorseful stares or House looms from one clinic exam room to another and they scowl at each other with the maladroit hostility she will soon have to transcend.

So Cuddy returns to her office, pacing nervously, losing her temper when the phone rings and it's not the lab, pouting and pining and gazing glassy eyed through glass doors. She knows she has to tell him but has no idea how. If she didn't feel obligated to tell the father first, she'd ask Wilson's advice, she'd beg him to intervene.

But she's alone and just has to hope he'll act like an adult.

-

House has changed over the last year. Neither adaptation nor growth, he's been struggling to see her differently since the bus crash. It's hindsight and a sense of their history and more. He can finally reciprocate Cuddy's passionate loyalty. She's saved him so many times, this is his chance to rescue her, to breathe life back into her with the love could never admit, the contrived contingent kismet that's announced its promises so long after his first chance, he wonders if it's too late.

For the first time in a long time the future feels like a guarantee. He did something impulsive and knows it's not a mistake. Not that it's a miracle either. It's an opportunity, an accident, an attempt like everything else.

And he knows it won't last, which is why he's stayed silent the last weeks. The stress of suspecting is as close to happiness as he's been in years. Once he knows, once they talk about it, it will begin to end. Effort and ignorance, emotions and expectations, all of the years of denial, of trading the carnal and companionship for the platonic and professional or sustaining only the vaguest semblance of a real relationship––––––their friendship–––––will expire. Speaking risks replacing that one constant with romance or ruin.

He can't think about it now. Inaction he usually resists but too torn to jeopardize the momentary serenity of uncertainty, he passively searches for a solution. Times like this, from the far side of the crowded clinic he watches her. She thinks no one is looking, but he sees what no one else can, Cuddy's melancholy contemplation. Her nails trace circles along their polished mahogany past and somehow he knows what she's thinking. He knows she knows and he knows there's only one thing he can do.

-

By the front desk she stands, feigning paperwork, waiting. When she glimpses his limp peripherally leaving the elevator in her , Cuddy's heart skips a beat.

"House," she says, wanting it to be Greg, just once.

"I need to talk to you. In my office."

"Sorry. Five o clock boss," he points to his watch and keeps moving.

"House."

He ignores her. Cuddy goes after him until they're close, straddling the threshold, two feet inside and two feet out. Low and under her breath the words are almost apologetic,

"I'm pregnant."

"I know," House says because he can't say he knew she was ovulating, he can't say he wanted this. He can't say he loves her.

So he just walks out.


	6. Intimacy

NOTES: More Stones throughout, some subtle some not, by request. This is the last chapter of the second volume, so there is only one volume (three chapters) left. Sorry it took an extra week. I hope people are still reading. If you are please review. Thank you!

* * *

**VI. Intimacy**

The purpose of life is to perpetuate itself.

Penetration, fusion, division and dissolution–––––– without a microscope, conception tells the tragic love story of an ordinary relationship.

Through the union of a man and a woman to create new life, however accidental, impulsive or regretted the event, a reason for being is perceived, achieved.

Conceived.

Beyond life's obvious proximate objective, it struggles also to surpass itself. If all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.

But if one can evolve from spectator to creator, then life becomes the meaning.

Science and faith, love and lies, the existence of each is superfluous without meaning. The ceaseless struggle to negate the sense of eternal meaninglessness is tempered by time, moments lost, recaptured only by memory.

Then the day comes when the purpose presents and the symptom is the cure, the sum of wasted time making itself seen, fate or fluke, and the true meaning of it all is finally found.

_**emotional rescue**_

Cuddy drives.

The adventure she plunged into so spontaneously and that was so intoxicatingly beautiful she fears is not the great, mutually fulfilling love she has a full right to expect, the perilous completion she deserves.

History tells her that House's indifference is superficial and largely feigned and though she's petrified of confronting him only to be rejected, denied or disappointed, again, it is what she is about to do.

Intimidated by the B on his door, she knocks and waits.

No thud of the cane, no shuffling feet, no answer. She's about to grapple for his spare key (Wilson told her a while ago where he keeps it) but she decides to turn the knob first.

It's unlocked.

He knew she would come. He knew she was pregnant. She wants to know what else he knows.

The living room is empty. Cuddy hears water running and barges into the bathroom. House is soaking in the tub, his cheeks flushed, hair damp. What she sees first are his eyes, azure and inescapable, the shade has been a constant in her life and if their child has his eyes, it always will be.

"I'm pregnant," she says, her voice cracking with irrational uncertainty.

"I heard you the first time."

"To _you_, you moron."

"I know."

A beat.

"What? Why didn't you–––––"

A wave of warm water rises and washes over her skirt and legs

"House!"

Another splash crests and saturates her shoes.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to get you to take your clothes off."

He splashes her again, aiming higher. Cuddy reaches for a towel.

"I'm not getting out. So if you want to talk about this, you're going to have to get in."

Cuddy considers a compromise and hesitates but after an exasperated sigh, tosses the towel aside and starts undressing. Her body begins to change before his eyes, altering his perception from this moment forward. House gazes with a cerebral fascination, an idée fixe, the weight of awareness falling on him that this body and no other is fated to fulfill his life, his entire life.

She feels that fascination, that devotion adhere to her skin and warm relief replaces the anger and confusion. The future is irreversible now, complicated, conceived and about to be embraced by them both.

When she looks down those blue eyes are still analyzing every imperfection, with a patience she never knew he possessed. Resting an elbow on the edge of the tub he contorts to make room for her as Cuddy steps in quickly. Bare, pale and insecure, for once she isn't just the boss.

The water is scalding and she's staring at his shins, an unfamiliar amaranth beneath a few bubbles. House doesn't touch her. He lets her sink, adjust, relax. He waits for her to start her polemic about pregnancy, for all he anxiety to escape somehow, splattering and staining the tiles on the wall. But she sits still, shivering, speechless. Finally he runs his palms down her forearms, smoothing away gooseflesh and letting her drift closer.

Anchored, protected, safe in his arms, Cuddy's lips part and though nothing escapes but a wisp of startled air, every hope, fear, frustration and aspiration of her life is divulged. This intimacy has always been unspoken, unrequited, unattainable. Here it's hers, buoyancy by chance and a baby, a beautiful baby, promised by biology and never to be negated by law.

"Are you happy?" House asks so softly she doubts the words as much as reality.

Cuddy nods, submerged in every emotion at once, soaking in comfortable bliss with House's biceps flexing as he squeezes her, letting his lips settle near her neck. His legs shift so that they bracket her body, tense and hirsute against the outsides of her thighs. Cuddy's breath hitches when his hands overlap across her abdomen. House is stroking her stomach and it's the most intimate thing she could imagine, his thumb spiraling slow and his palm splayed over her womb. It's a more profound acceptance than even she's experienced. They're naked and sweating and what she feels should be sexual but instead it's just an overwhelming sense of well being, and, loved.

Closing her eyes, she leans back, moulding closer, wanting to be held tighter. Rather than shy or vulnerable she feels home and ineffably happy. With his chin on her shoulder, Cuddy turns and kisses him, and it's more than a homecoming, more than tender gratitude, it is the culmination of all they left unexpressed, the realization of every abandoned dream.

Their foreheads rest close and the humidity of their breath dissipates into the steam of the room. A single kiss and he's smiling, despite the pressure on his leg, despite the accidental affair that they're complicating exponentially.

He wanted this, this scene of self-disclosure, intimately simple but not simply intimate. He wanted her happy and here and to trust him, stripped of the weary suspicion she wears at work. A few dripping fingers comb through Cuddy's hair, pushing it behind an ear. When she looks at him, House can't tell what's water or sweat or tears. He kisses her temple and neck and back and they steep in ecstatic shock and acceptance a fleeting few more minutes.

When the water starts to cool and the energy of the inevitable achievement exhausts, she gets out slowly, stretching for the towel she threw aside earlier and he tries not to stare at the perfect body that will be unrecognizable in several months. But smitten, he's stricken with an all consuming desire to appreciate the body as it is.

Cuddy dries and wraps the towel tight, but low enough to complement her cleavage. Then she turns to see he's examining her. House is waiting, so she extends a hand to help him out of the tub. His left leg comes out clumsy but careful and his right step falters.

Incapable of staving off the sentimental, House falls forward into a kiss. And Cuddy thinks I remember this, the first kiss, a tirade against time. The memory of that House, twenty-six and choosing the puzzle over the pretty girl is all she's had, until now.

Now he's got his arms around her and the beard has her cheeks raw but it's atonement and a relief that he's never changed. If his brilliance and blue eyes hinge on cynicism and contempt, she wants him no less.

Their lips refuse of part and eyes never open on the way to his bedroom. Wet footprints, the furnace kicks on and as they fall to the bed, House feels the blow of his assailant, the wry sly ambush of his ego by, of all things, love.

He wants to tear off the terrycloth and bury his face in her breasts for the next eight months, to tell her things he's never told anyone, to ask her how they ended up here. But Princeton's not Michigan and she's having his baby. A legacy greater than collegiate accomplishment or the stigma of success despite his disposition, he already wonders what will go wrong. Self sabotage has made happiness impossible and he has no idea if he wants more than this: Cuddy closer to completion and them nothing more than colleagues. So he holds his breath and stares at her, the towel still intact.

There's less pain when they're like this. The heat of the bath and their bodies almost melts the frozen missing muscle. Braced on his elbows, she's pinned beneath him, her hand rising to House's cheek, promising to stay for as long as he lets her. The tears in her eyes he kisses away and the towel soon follows. Then they're bare and breathless on damp sheets in the middle of winter.

He's pressed against her inconceivably close, throbbing and slick. Grazing his chin across her chest, he half thrusts into the narrow space between their bodies and moans at the imminence of reconnection. What was anatomical convenience nudging at her incessantly in the tub is now what she needs, a remedy reminding her that they're more than employer and employee, that they've finally bridged the boundary between instigating each other's misery and fulfilling each other's lives.

The severity of the consummation escapes them, eclipsed by the vertigo of kissing. Dizzy, high and afraid of coming down, this kind of easy, absorbed kissing House hasn't had since he was a serenading adolescent, or a ruthlessly arrogant and always right campus legend.

The ardor and affection, remnants of grief and an insuperable fear of the future, he can see everything in her eyes when their long exchanged breath runs out of oxygen and he breaks the kiss gently. Resting his forehead against hers, they breathe into each other's open mouths, lips wet, hearts pounding. Against the odds he's become a sort of savior, steadfast and true, coming to her emotional rescue.

House kisses the nape of her neck, a soaked ebony strand catching on his jaw. His tongue finds her breasts but the beard doesn't and she squirms waiting for the scrape and burn that he never lets happen. Considerate, she never thought he would be. Tender, she never thought he could be. His sentience is romance and she could want nothing more.

But House's determined virility will fade; she's waiting for his pain as much as her own. Waiting to hear the rattle of the vicodin bottle, to feel the warm weight of him roll on to his back, her fingers rake through his hair and curl around his neck, expelling a short sharp gasp at the slippery glide and grind of prostrate pelvises.

When his face rises from her darker areolas, she tries to gauge his state physically. No tremors in the muscle, no unnecessary tension, the leg's more resilient than she would have suspected. Cuddy can't even feel the scar against her own thigh. Always his doctor, trying to save him from himself, she's waited and wanted this for so long––––––the day when he's more than just _her_ best doctor, the day when he's whole again, forgiveness, recovery––––––tonight.

Vignetted by a stray ray of cobalt light, she can see his lips curving into one last prepenetrative grin. House stays on top without a second thought. He eases in slow, wanting to find a place so deep inside her that he can never get out, never let go. The pressure is perfect as he lunges smooth and stops, the motion and stillness more than completion.

An apogee of intimacy, it isn't nostalgia or time flying or stopping. It's delicate and destiny, coercion into coalescence. Bound by more than the years between them or the borders they've breached, they don't recognize the difference. House is lost in the wet heat of her, lost in the truth behind her eyes, the memory of her mouth, the shape, the taste, the spring of his life's mistake. He's home when her muscles clutch, her hips moving in compromising counterpoint.

A smothering gust of the sensory then House shifts and she turns her face into his bicep, tasting salt and soap and knowing that strength without hope has always been the struggle. The melancholy reflection fades when his pace accelerates. Rapid shallow pushes and his name whispered low then evanesced in the space between their lips. Her foot scales up his calf and Cuddy spreads her legs wider, holding onto him and this illusion of painlessness, of perpetuating the possibility that this will never end.

When she's close, he knows. Arching, he pivots and pumps deeper, until she's trembling beneath him, stifling a scream, then coming loud and hard and biting his bottom lip, lifting her hips. It revival, House whole, over, around and inside her, making love with the same precision, the same focus as a diagnosis, and nothing's broken but a sweat.

Stable, steady, strong this body above her isn't the unattainable object of her adoration anymore. Her nails sink into his skin to see if she's holding on to only the memory, of Michigan and the man she's always loved.

Breathtaking, the motionless beat between them, the three words they'll never say only the sound of snow falling, until they're buried, the starlight and moonlight and sky married to the night, like each passing moment to memory.

Fidelity and an attempt to inherit forever, this connection is a contract, a promise, a vow. Cuddy's arms are constrictingly tight, pulling him in, making him deeply, finally and permanently a part of her. Writhing toward that intoxicating sense of invincibility, her eyelids flutter and her heart stops when she feels every muscle in his body tighten, the stream of heat pouring out of him in a relentless rush and he thrusts through it until she's coming again or still coming, their orgasmic continuity a commitment, a tacit, blind, inevitable engagement.

House hovers, heaving and basking in the warmth of being inside her. His arms are weak and his kiss off center, he parts his lips to speak but can only blow her bangs away from her eyes and gaze curious at the sapphires staring back at him. On the edge of collapsing, he tugs the comforter over them and settles supine beside her. Cuddy splays and hand over his chest, just to touch him and slides a cold foot between his ankles. A chill and she nestles closer.

He could get used to this.

The post coital chemicals swimming through his bloodstream almost persuade House to ask her to move in, to stay here until they figure everything out. Endorphins and adrenaline and serotonin seeking complacency, right now he wishes he weren't a doctor, that he didn't know it was only chemistry, afterglow and a whim.

Silent he lies, fearing that the old fashioned impulse to fall to bended knee will come eventually, or at all. Their love is ethereal, or unreal –––––not verbal. He can't let the continuation of the inexpressible depend on a question. Or the answer.

What happens next is the other question that can't be answered.

Less than nine months then a new life.

Cuddy's beautiful, caught in his arms. Administrator and single mother, House can't eliminate the alternative. Pulverized or legitimized, their relationship has yet to incur the repercussions of reproduction. John is in the back of his head, the ghost of what he's petrified of becoming, and his conscience, the moral compass of impostor paternity imploring him to do the right thing––––– buy a ring.

He never told her about his dad and the illegitimacy of his identity. Now he wants to tell her he never knew his real father and that he can't tolerate the possibility of perpetuating the misery of vacancy or an unanswered question with this new life.

But instead he drapes an arm across her waist, drawing his hand back and resting it on her still flat stomach.

"This belly... " He starts.

"...in two months will be a bump, and then a bulge and then the earth's axis will––––"

"Shut up," she says and closes her eyes because he's smiling and it's the last thing she wants to see, a moment so beautiful she thought it could never be. Then just like the night, she dissolves into sleep, dreaming about what will undoubtedly be a brilliant, indefatigable baby.

The serenity whispers of wide spaces.

House feels once again open to the journey, their commencement through conception that's anything but an accident. Tomorrow's horizon is clear in the dark quiet and, sinking in crumpled blankets on his own bed, he's not alone, for the first in a very long time.

Everything melts into a marvelous unity. The blue light and the blue sheets, holding his breath and trying to make this memory last, trying to drown in the joy, he descends deeper into oblivious happiness. In love and not agony, the doctor is going to be a father.

Caught in the undertow of truth, submerged by the water of purpose, the beat of his heart is making circles on the surface.

-

Morning comes cold.

House's arm hangs over the edge of the bed and one eye opens to the distant echo of gagging. He stands slowly, opening a drawer and picking up a prescription bottle that isn't vicodin.

Limping to the bathroom, his eyes pan the place but don't see his cane. What he does see is Cuddy eloquently hugging his toilet bowl and heaving into it as good as any gravid. He stoops and sets the bottle beside her.

"Here," he says.

Wondering without worrying, he hesitates but awkwardly brushes her hair away from her eyes. Cuddy sighs, a little color refilling her face and they help each other stand.

"What's this?" She asks, holding the bottle of compazine.

"For the nausea," answers House as he turns to walk away.

"You just had morning sickness meds laying around your apartment?

House, how long have you known?"

"I've _known _since you told me."

The subtext of what's unsaid accentuates semantics:

'_I've suspected since that_ _night.'_

And he shrugs. "Sex sans contraception, it's Russian roulette––––"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

A beat. House knows risks but never cites chance above fact, she can almost comprehend that he _hoped_ this would happen. Except House doesn't hope.

"I thought you knew we had sex," he says snarkly, sparing her the weight of the truth, the beast of burden his admission of intent would be.

Cuddy doesn't ask if she's pregnant on purpose, the thought is naive, he's hopeless and not romantic. He's the same man, dedicated to deduction. Pregnancy was possible,unlikely, but possible. A zebra among horses, attracting his perception for the imperceptible, that's why he knew. She could never guess the unplanned was premeditated. But when she dresses and leaves, a strange suspicion lingers.

_**purpose and plurality**_

Greg House is a gemini. He's a drug addict, an atheist, a doctor and soon he'll be a parent. For him the purpose has always been the puzzle. Born out of a lie he became an enigmatic pariah, playing God and solving medical mysteries.

Fatherhood is the alternative he never accepted. Afraid he'd fail, that he was inherently incapable because of the fatherless void John could never fill, he was obsessively cautious over the years to never pass on genes half of which he doesn't know the origin or the history.

His greatest fear now is that he's a facilitator and not a participant. Aware of his own expendability, he doesn't want to lose his child, or the mother of his child, and have fatherhood fade away the same way it did fifty years ago for that friend of the family whose name should be his instead of House.

The only way to pronounce his desire for permanent participation may be before a justice of the peace, signing papers and making his boss, best friend, the woman carrying his baby, a House herself.

-

"Need a consult," says House, sticking his head into the clinic exam room and interrupting Wilson.

"I'm with a patient."

"Urgent doctor stuff."

"Excuse me," politely pleads Wilson to his patient as he stands and steps out.

"What do you want? Some doctors occasionally treat patients. But that's only if they want paid..."

They're walking, an aimless but determined stride, side by side.

"Why did you get married?" House asks pacing more than limping, with a restless urgency.

"The first time," he clarifies.

"You interrupted an examination because you're curious about my matrimonial motives? Why? You think all marriage is equally superficial, hopeless. Inane."

"Yes, that's why you got _divorced_.

I asked why you got married in the first place."

"Because I loved her," Wilson says wistfully, trying to keep up.

"Or I thought I did. I was young, my soul hadn't been stained by your cynicism yet."

"Did you really think it would last?"

Wilson nods. "Forever." Then,

"Where are we going?"

House stops, shaking his head. They've circled the clinic and are standing with their backs to Cuddy's office. House turns and starts moving again.

"Really, House why ask me this now? Does this have something to do with Amber? Or Cuddy?"

But he's gone, more aware than ever that he's running out of time as much as against it.

_** aside: his and hers**_

Tying the nuptial knot is no different than tightening a tourniquet. They're already married, he tries to convince himself. He's stayed with her for years, having the fits and fights and misery of marriage without any of the bedroom benefits. Cuddy's illogically and insanely loyal to him, protective and willing

to sacrifice anything to keep him alive, or happy, or here.

The conformity and convention of marrying he's always resisted, to the point where he had to make a life to keep himself in hers. The fear of losing her, the last woman he knows he loves is too much. For the man who thought he had nothing left  
to lose, no move is inconsequential.

Cuddy is concerned solely with the consequences. Motherhood may mean nothing more than miscarriage. Not just literal, but a miscarriage of character. She knows House is capable of being mentor and doctor but father is a role she never saw him filling. It's not that he lacks paternal potential completely, he has raised three fellows and adopted three more. And his own juvenility may lend itself to a unique bond between parent and child, one she suspects will double the catastrophes as they come. But House hated his dad, and though he's never admitted why, Cuddy knows issues are bound to ensue.

If John was disappointed his son never became a soldier, will House be disappointed if their child doesn't become a doctor. Will the caustic cripple demote their son or daughter's first steps because he can't walk? Or will he transcend his own ego and choose the mundane over the mysteries?

What's more, will he choose her? Even if House does play the role of paternity perfectly, will he stay or stray? Has he gotten so used to hookers that fidelity feels unnatural. Can he overcome his innate aversion to monogamy?

Cuddy's concerns have all become questions, fear prevailing certainty. All she knows is that for better or worse they're a part of each other's lives, scientifically inseparable because of the third person they've created. They will be parents, plural, if not a couple, if nothing else at all.

-

February 14th he avoids her, the only day when sex is expectedly dispersed but he's brooding about the long term effects. No chocolates or flowers or excuses.

At work nothing's changed, for now. The clash and strain and ultimate concessions are tainted by trepidation. There's more at stake than their relationship.

The last time Cuddy conceived, she lost it within weeks. Then Joy. And Rachel. Luck, biological or legal, has always been defeated by loss so she's put hope on hold for now.

Cuddy chooses an obstetrician and schedules an ultrasound, at eight weeks instead of six, late to keep her anticipation tempered by realism. House keeps interrogating Wilson about his first marriage, the one wife he never met, more curious about it's inception than deterioration. Wilson's suspicion grows but House always justifies the objectivity of his questions, juxtaposing them with a patient or a case, and sustaining his perspective as cynic and critic.

A time passes and maternity becomes Cuddy.

Her burgeoning bosom goes anything but unnoticed and the constant craving for a Zagnut has House present and passively disobedient more often than not.

Sex is sporadic as her libido lags but it doesn't matter much. In the last few weeks House has somehow resurrected the same sublimating charm as when they were students, not affectionate, but interested. Attached even.

The most intimate moments are comfortable and quiet and clothed, with his arm behind but not around her, the TV flicking in front of them and a reproachful stack of red and yellow wrappers on the coffee table–––––––the nursery unlit and empty across the hall and them, friends and lovers, knowing this is only the beginning–––– and embracing it.

But it's still a secret and the temptation to concede their souls and confess their sin never wanes. Keeping the secret keeps them exempt from the consequences of a public relationship, sustaining for now the unreality that has always been _their_ relationship. Emotional compartmentalization is kept to a minimum and both are dwelling on the odds of this all ending abruptly.

The incidence of miscarriage is higher in Cuddy's age bracket so they're holding their breath in the silences and preparing themselves for the worse. Cuddy's sister has twins, eight year old girls now, and at every holiday since the IVF failed she's thought she must have waited too long, tried too late. The levity of hope won't come until she's holding her baby, a healthy, happy, newborn baby.

-

Late on a Sunday, Cuddy opens the door, expecting nobody but her baby's daddy with a bagful of candybars. It's Wilson.

"House has been acting weird."

She rubs her head and ties the belt of her robe. Still, he can tell what she's wearing.

"Weird how?" She yawns, vaguely disappointed as he steps in.

"Asking me about marriage and children...

Are you wearing House's Hopkins shirt?"

"No," she says sharply and almost again, but repeating would only confirm her guilt. Wide awake she asks:

"Marriage?"

Wilson nods.

"Maybe it's a midlife crisis. I at least _tried_ to have a family, you've been married and divorced, House never had either, he never really even tried."

"Stacy."

"He pushed Stacy away."

"Why now? Why the existential epiphany now?" Wilson asks.

Cuddy shrugs, her feigned ignorance a thin veil.

"It's _you," _he inflects sharply.

"You're sleeping with House. You thought I was him, it's why you answered the door like this."

"I answered the door like this because it's my day off. And, I don't want to waste it speculating about why House has taken a sudden interest in all the ordinary things he's spent his life scoffing at and running away from."

Wilson squints incredulously, knowing he's stumbled upon a clue, the tshirt a smoking gun, evidence even he can't believe.

"Fine," he says, suddenly uncomfortable about confronting her and turning

toward the door.

"But that's _House's_ shirt."

"Right, and I'm having his child," Cuddy says with her hand trembling on the knob, trying to sound sarcastically nonchalant but really only managing ironically true.

That night when House does come by, she kisses him in the foyer and tries to imagine doing it everyday, tries to imagine the domestic solicitude of a husband, House as a spouse. She'd resigned to the hope of settling, to the comfortable conformity of marriage. With him though is the only way it could be, and she wonders if he'll ever see that.

-

The start of March House goes to work early, having procrastinated long enough about making that ordinary and acceptable promise he can't keep.

"I need to borrow some money," he says to Wilson and wanders away with a check and no explanation.

_**diamonds ≠ forever (the pathology of a prenatal proposal)**_

The unconditionality of any emotion does not exist. Feelings are not scientific, they're not immutable. Love can become hate, joy sorrow and pleasure pain, in a heartbeat. House knows how fast and unforeseeable the border can be crossed between fleeting elation and permanent anguish.

It was May. The sun slanted across the fairway and Stacy had just teed off toward the 9th hole. House reached for his driver, adjusted the velcro of his glove and squinted because that instant it started––––– an intense, piercing pain in the middle of his right thigh. Three days later he was diagnosed, induced into a coma and saved, against his will, by the last woman who heard him say I love you.

The dream became a nightmare, their future a past, wrecked by the metamorphosis of every emotion into its foil.

House knows the approaching proximity of the space that separates every moment from the next, he knows no commitment is unconditional and nothing lasts forever.

Yet he's parking his bike outside the finest jewelry store in Princeton and calling his own bluff. If not poetically eternal, what he feels for Cuddy is at least obstinately recurring.

There is also the chance that after all the faithless years of futile pursuits, he may have finally found something worth while. Cuddy's invested as much _in_ him as she's sacrificed _for_ him. But he's not here out of guilt or the reciprocity of responsibility. He's come here now because fourteen years ago he didn't could find the courage to.

Before the infarction he talked about marriage with Stacy. He knew she wanted to settle someday into the wedded normality of American life. House never said no, he never told her he'd never get married, because with her, he might have. Stacy spoke of who she'd invite and what season she saw the celebration happening, her honeymoon in Paris. But he could never envision the details as vividly, not the flowers or the dress or Wilson as his best man. He couldn't step inside a ring store either. He liked what they had, while it lasted. For years after, he wondered where he'd be if not for his fear of jewelry.

With Cuddy though he can see–––––Wilson in a bow tie at the end of an aisle, Cuddy under a canopy and a honeymoon wherever in the world she wants but their flight home landing in Ann Arbor, commencing again from where it all began, the love that led them to that moment.

And the love that led him here.

De Beers the window reads and a threshold's passed. House is inside, sweating in spite of winter and trying to rationalize semantically that engagement does not necessarily equate marriage. They could drift through a decade wearing rings and making plans for a day they know will never happen. Except pregnancy has a tendency to rush nuptials in an attempt to legitimize itself. Speed is his adversary, running toward a finish line when he can't even walk, every step closer to the glass case defies logic.

How doubts become vows he can't describe.

House browses, dejected to find that a ring three years older than him is considered an antique. Surly and stroking his chin, he contemplates the dispersion of white light into spectral colors, cut and clarity, trying to make the distinction between superstition and symbolism.

He can't decide how carbon's allotrope has become invaluable, precious but not priceless. No expression of divine grace, or sacramental consecration, nothing is holy about wedlock. Liturgical, legal, illogical people don't settle for love or companionship. They settle for asylum.

Staring through glass at diamonds, he doesn't know what it means. Monogamy is impossible but anything else is worse. A quote or a caveat, it almost makes sense. The gold aesthetic of the ring represents eternity and the diamond, Greek for unbreakable, is advertised as a tangible forever.

Again House reminds himself that there is no forever. Time is finite and emotion just as ephemeral.

But it's been a long drought of decency. A part of him has been persuaded to purchase a timeless token, that crystal lattice that scintillates espousal. The gilt of guilt, with a shining solitaire stone and a dollar sign in front of four figures. Is it worth it? That's not really the question. There's no price calculable for what he owes Cuddy. He is the worthless one, panicked as he plots a prenatal proposal, about the pain of waiting on bended knee and her perverse pleasure in rejecting him.

It's a gamble. Paying now to be punished later, for the pregnancy he practically planned and the paternity he's petrified of inheriting. Now's the time to toss the tumbling dice because even if he doesn't win, he'll at least break even.

One chance, no test, the purpose, the reason, reality. This is it.

House wavers. The ring of her dreams, platinum and diamonds surrounding a sapphire. It's meant to be hers. He asks to hold it and answers about her size and an engraving.

Invented infinity, a ring is wrong. He has to show her he's going to stay some other way, something less cliché, less ordinary. Audible affection, pixels and resolution instead of carat and clarity, there's only one thing he can do.

_**the gravity of gravidity**_

Eight weeks and five days into the new year, Cuddy signs in for her first ultrasound. This is the second time she's seen Dr. Richardson, a polite and competent female OBGYN she met at a conference and hired five years ago.

The exam room is cold, the hospital gown less than flattering and Cuddy wishes she had someone to help her tie it, a husband, a friend, the coconspirator in the unexpected conception. But she manages a knot alone then sighs and sits and waits.

Through the door fifteen minutes later comes House, in a labcoat and without a cane.

"Good afternoon Mrs..." He looks at her chart, pretending she's an anonymous patient.

"_Miss _Cuddy."

"House, where's Dr. Richardson?"

"Busy. Being bombarded by babies, somewhere I would think. That's what the B in OBGYN stands for, isn't it?"

Cuddy considers insisting on his plan to usurp the obstetrics department, but this is the day she sees her child for the first time, hears their baby's heartbeat. She'd rather be denied the details of whatever is distracting her real doctor. House sits, the ultrasound cart at arm's length, an agenda at hand.

"Chart says you're forty-three, sort of old to be pregnant and single.  
So what happened? High school sweetheart forget you after prom night?  
One night stand and the bastard never called?"

She wants to tell him to stop with the role playing, to shout that this is important to her and it should be for him and why can't he ever let a beautiful moment be––––But even Cuddy is curious where this is leading.

"I work with him actually," she reluctantly admits after a minute.

"Dangerous game, combining procreation and office politics. Does he know?"

House adjusts the bed and a tense Cuddy lies back. He's leaning close enough to kiss her, but just blinks bashful and pulls back, resisting the smile that's starting to shape.

"He knows more than me."

As he pushes the hospital gown aside and reveals her stomach, House thinks of asking if she loves him, but it would be a wasted question, seem like a desperate affirmation. So he stays clinical, almost objective, turning on the ultrasound and reaching for the wand. Facilitator or participant, all he knows is that he's a perpetrator, and under his palms is the purpose.

"You're lying. If he knew more than you, you wouldn't be here alone."

"He's..." She starts, a strange force of habit, to make an excuse for his absence even when he's present. Stranger, even with her he has to be someone else to be himself.

"He's afraid of change. He knows that this changes everything, that he has to change. And he's afraid he can't."

"But," and this is true intimacy, her voice cracking, a tear quivering on her eyelash, and House's hand on hers. The gravity of the moment demands a ring on her finger except he has no ring, no words, he can only listen and not let go.

"He belongs in this baby's life. And in mine."

"Sounds serious. Are you going to marry him?"

Cuddy's lips part in stunned silence. The charade's over, she knows this is as close to a proposal as she's going to get from him, that three lives hinge on her reply.

The pause that follows answers his question and House starts paying attention to the ultrasound. Or, lack of sound.

"Hold this," he says handing her the wand. Then he adjusts the volume and refocuses the image, seeing something he can't believe, hearing twice as much.

"House, what is it?" But she knows.

An echo, a life, two–––– tiny hearts beating.

"Twins."


	7. Futures

Notes: Sorry it took so long. Thank you all for waiting, I hope you're still reading. The last three chapters are complex and fairly long, so I apologize for the interim between updates. But don't worry, this is all leading to an end that is a happy, albeit Housian one. Thank you for reading. Please review!

* * *

_**volume iii (fraternity)**_

**VII.** **Futures**

The song she hears is the one he never played for her in Ann Arbor.  
A serenade her processional, it feels like a dream.

At the threshold she stands, sighing away tears then turning to make her entrance. All eyes on her, time mires. At the other end of the aisle stands a man, a waiting silhouette. She wants to race toward him, run away with him, but slowly she steps, inevitably, exhaustedly in his direction, alone and clasping a single white rose.

The dress was her mother's, lace she thought she'd never inherit worn with pride, with joy on the day she thought would never come.

Auburn leaves catch gold across the sun this azure dusk, the triumph of time that is twilight. Behind a veil, she's hidden, treading trepidacious toward a love that for too long has been forbidden, red pedals and baby's breadth behind each step.

Beneath a canopy slants a contingency, a chance who saw her twenty years ago on a campus tennis court, who's retreated and returned and is waiting to hear her vows. His features beam, standing undaunted, composed, calm as ever, Wilson his best man, her sister an adjacent maid of honor.

Wordless vows, a recollection. Their loyalty's been lived, today isn't a promise but proof of their fear of ever parting. At the altar she stands with elegance, all doubts abandoned decades ago, pale when the gossamer veil is lifted. Tears stream down her softly shining porcelain skin then a kiss, flawless, surreal, the ephemeral alchemy of every kiss before and more––––––the illusion that truth and trust and time have always been entwined, that every moment has led to this one.

A glass is smashed, the ceremony's over but the night is not. This woman's dream has never been the gown or the shoes or the ring but the night, tonight, when marriage makes love mean more, when all emotion is insoluble, their souls inseparable, a puzzled solved. Her dream is this night, champagne for breakfast, then the rest of their lives.

A sincere smirk and shaking hand open the door. No honeymoon but still an escape, their hotel room. As he closes the door behind them, relieved, she moves swiftly to close the intervening space, her arms rising in a premature caress then pulling him to her. Together they crush out the stiff folds of her dress in one unreal and enduring embrace.

Silk sheets and starlight and sad blue eyes. His and hers, and hands highlighted by ring fingers wearing infinity. He lies down then rivets her to his side, transcending time, trapped in a rapturous trice.

Once he whispers gently in the middle of a kiss that he loves her. Then without moving his head, looks through the window to where the moon is anchored mid-sky, making love in one of those immortal moments shining so bright that their remembered light is enough to see by for years.

They cling to each other, the momentum of midnight bringing them closer. Breathless and blind and bound by wedded bliss, her sigh is a benediction, an ecstatic surety that she is his past, his future, his saving grace. For another instant life is complete, the future a phantom and their love eternal–––––

Kissing, clutching, they come back down, her head resting on his bare chest. His pounding heartbeat fades into interference, a subliminal sound bridge––––– beep, tone, pulse, the hauntingly persistent echo of an EKG. The hotel has become a hospital room, the exquisite excruciating, the dream a nightmare.

A scream, unmistakable, the sound of inconceivable pain, of muscle death. On his torn and bleeding lips it's like a pitiful retching of the soul. Then nothing. Silence and a sine wave flattening. She's losing the man she loves. He's dying and there's nothing she can do but watch, helpless, weak, standing at a distance she can't divide, she can't move. She can't save his life.

"Cuddy!

Cuddy! Wake up!"

Relief washes over her, gradually waking to a familiar voice.

"It's just a dream. It's not real."

And she knows it never will be.

But as House brushes his palm over her stomach and settles his chin against her shoulder, falling asleep again soon, Cuddy lies half awake and hoping the dream might one day be more. He holds her like she's never been held, calloused fingers and cold toes and the warm length of his body behind her––––––comfortable and close, she's home in his arms and wondering when his soft snore, his nose against her ear, his scars, became the most beautiful things in her life.

And how long they will remain.

Her subconscious is taunting her, with nightmares of pain and parting when he's right beside her. The fear of him fleeing has always been there, tainting what she feels for him, what she's always felt, keeping her silent when all she wants to do is scream stay.

_**waking life**_

Day breaks late, with his beard burning high across her back and four bare feet peeking out from under blue sheets. Cuddy yawns and warms his hand with hers, and for the first time she can remember, his knuckles don't bend and retreat.

Since the ultrasound House has been different. After he heard the unexpected echo, he spent another fifteen minutes staring at the symmetry alive and growing inside of his boss's uterus. When he stood, speechless, his left heel landed in a puddle of lubricant he spilled (in the process of repeating the ultrasound and seeing only a clearer image) and he hydroplaned with slapstick eloquence until the gravity of gravidity grounded him to slippery tile.

Half a bottle of vicodin and an x-ray later, he's got two useless legs and a pregnant woman nursing him, in another display of the duality of irony.

The injured ankle is an excuse to stay most nights. Cuddy comes over concerned, and secretly yearning for a conversation about the consequences and, exhausted, takes a nap in his bed. Or she takes him home from the hospital complaining and on crutches and he insists that sponge bathing a convalescing department head is a part of her administrative responsibilities. After a long lonely soak, he sprawls across her bed and refuses to leave. An unconventional courtship, though they'd never admit it, they're starting to get used to it.

The rides home are quiet with him in the passenger seat and her steering but despite her uncertainty about where they're going. They're not together every night, when they are they have an reason, the intimacy is justified. Rational almost, their pragmatic coupling. It's strange that his right leg is the stronger one now, that what they're doing is starting to make sense.

Impossible, all of it. How even his sperm is precise and right, against biological odds. Overwhelming is her desire to repay him, to show him some way how grateful she is–––––––if.

_If_ he did this for her, honestly, intentionally, in one night reciprocated everything she's ever done for him, then this is more, they should make it more.

At first she felt guilty, for not telling him she was off the pill, for wanting nothing between them, for hesitating, no, _hoping_ this would happen. Somehow he's still with her, his elbow pushing into her hip, his breath a tepid gust against the back of her neck and a stiff and waking part of him nudging lower.

Since that day they haven't had sex. She doesn't know if it's her ever-expanding and twice as fast ass, or if it's because the parasite growing inside her has a heartbeat and a sibling, but the last weeks they've slept together without sleeping together. The affection hasn't waned, not that it's overt. All the unspoken subtleties are validating what's otherwise gone unrequited but it's reliance more than relations and reminiscence most of all.

His inconvenient injury is making her agonizingly nostalgic. The years they've spent together are greater than the years before they found each other and the past is always present.

There was a time after the infarction, when House disappeared from her life. A time before she hired him and after she saved him, when Stacy was smoking through therapy then gone. A time when they were just lonely souls desperately seeking solace and closure and everything they knew they could never have.

Cuddy never played the sympathetic attending, she never wept out of pity or stared at his leg with mournful eyes reminding him that he's a cripple. She was guilty but only he saw it. When he was gone she missed the arguments, the imbalance of blame and recuperation, the physical contact when she changed his dressings or removed his stitches, sponge bathing him because no nurse would, not because he was an invalid. Not until after he was discharged did she realize how close they had become. The inimitable intimacy of suturing his thigh, the thrill of restarting his heart and saving his life, his reentrance into hers, all the years of yearning and the way she still wanted him––––––

Then one night it happened. The May midnight that meant everything, everything she imagined since she was nineteen, everything, an end and their beginning–––––House on her doorstep, a push forward, a step back––––––the dependency of his grip, the way he kissed, reminiscent intensity and a familiar taste. They fought to the bedroom, all resistance but still remembering. They had only each other, facing what they feared most, the future as infinity.

He fell to the bed and she fell with him, always with him, struggling out of her clothes and descending down his body. Seeing the scar she let her fingers trace it and he didn't wince, he watched her. The guilt and remorse were gone, this was recovery, revival, the resurrection of the godlike Greg, her chance to make House a hero again.

What the job has kindled, that night was ignited.

The sense of the enormous panorama of life, once strong in him, had become dim almost to extinction but she brought him back, resuscitated his soul, gave him a purpose, a plan, a chance.

A hot breath blown along the hard length of him, her thumb coasted across his head as it glistened, her lips glossed with his vivication, tempted to devour him completely. But on his anticipatory inhalation, an epiphany paralyzed House: they might never have more than this, the invincible illusion of a lost love retrieved, one night, their first and last time.

"Lise," he said and she knew then it would be the last time, that she'd be Dean and boss, administrator and doctor–––––_Cuddy_, but never Lisa to him again.

Still, it was enough. She rose, settling onto his hips, arching into his touch when he penetrated her. It was the obsolescence of boundaries in a queen sized bed, a momentary lapse of logic, but nothing either would ever regret.

-

Some variation of the nuptial nightmare she's had since the day she held the defibrillator paddles and scorched his chest. And now another dream, one of tomorrow instead of yesterday but still wondering when she'll wake up.

The infarction was reunion through ruin. As much as she dreaded the miserable circumstances, the pain and proximity of loss, the anger and guilt, a part of her was almost grateful to have his life in her hands and his heart within reach.

Except she could never bring herself to grasp it. As long as it was her signature on his paycheck, she couldn't. Distance was her choice when she hired him, the concession her hope of happiness for his.

Too many years passed of seeing him solemn, electively alone. Stacy came back but it wasn't the same. Hookers or his hand, she never thought a man used to no strings could ever tie the proverbial knot.

When Wilson hired Ingrid Cuddy felt a tinge of envy. Now she admires the masseuse, the cane, the vicodin, anybody whose job it's ever been to attempt to support the man physically or alleviate his pain. He's let her massage his leg a few times since he fell and it's hard, staring at the scar, not knowing if the healing will ever negate all the hurt. Because the infarction's always there, the past in the present, the only reason they were ever reunited, as indelible as the border between wedding night and waking life.

-

The next night Cuddy stays again, with the anxiety of a recurring dream sustaining her insomnia. She tosses and turns and knows he's awake because he's not snoring and the friction of her movement is rousing a part of him she's been craving for weeks.

Separated only by cotton sheets and boxerbriefs, Cuddy turns again so that they're on their sides, face to face when House opens his eyes, an almost susceptible shade, and she closes hers quickly.

"Stop drooling on my pillow," he says, knowing she's awake.

Cuddy continues pretending to sleep with a furrowed brow and tight lip. A minute later his hand drifts down her body and he inches closer, kissing her neck, her shoulder, her chin, her lips.

"What are you doing?"

"Foreplay, " he mumbles drowsy, sliding out of his briefs.

"The post coital prolactin will help us both sleep."

Cuddy acquiesces. Chemically, he's right. And it still makes her heart ache when he admits that he wants her, that he loves her. No matter how he rationalizes his advances, it's still progress. He pulls her onto him and kisses her again, a sloppy sleepy kiss, a pivot of his hips, grinding into position but Cuddy pulls back.

"What? Afraid I'll knock you up?"

The question resonates with a sort of guffawed irony, not the usual sarcastic sting. Pithy really, their sardonic honesty, the subtext in the silence as she moves down his body.

It's beautiful what they have, waking in the middle of the night to find the other one there, letting go of the guilt from the past and fear of the future, letting go completely and just laying beside each other in the darkness. But she wants more, she wants to make this last. Willing to concede her body, her soul, herself if it means he'll stay, Cuddy can't feel anything but gratitude for every moment he's here with her, for what he's done, what he's been doing all along.

Warm lips against his hip, moving in, moving lower, deliberately delicate. Holding his breath, House watches rasped in the unreality of it. Too many jokes about fellating benefactors, he never thought she'd do this with him. Expectation ricochets off of the sensory and the cerebral, her eyelashes batting off his thigh, her hand holding him, just holding him.

When her mouth descends, his astonished satisfaction escapes with a hiss. She can feel his pulse rapid as he throbs in her grasp. Experimentally, she varies the pressure, alternating between gentle strokes and a constricting squeeze, letting him stiffen, the suction succinct as he seeps between her pursed lips. His foreskin is like satin and her tongue laps along it, tracing the most sensitive fringe. House tenses, fighting the urge to thrust, seeing her so concentrated on making him come.

He's close already. Just the thought of this fantasy being played out has soothed him through countless showers. Now he's disappearing down her throat and he's reveling in it, even as he resists what will be an inevitably explosive orgasm. Bucking into her grip, he can't tell what's nails or teeth or how many fingers she has because one finds his perineum while a palm glides across the slit in his glans, her bottom lip dragging up from his testicles.

House bites his tongue, his hands fisting the sheets as her hair cascades over his stomach and legs, brushing with every sharp shifting movement of her head. The tickle is contrast but vaguely misdirection; he's writhing under her weight, lifting his hips, struggling to set a steady rhythm, When he does, it starts, the culmination of everything she's doing for him, more than a physiological response it's intensity unlike anything, no rush but a slow rise.

He wants to be in her, buried. He knows she's wet and she wants it, but she's restraining herself and he's too high to wonder why. He just wants her to relent and ride out the euphoric escape together.

But it's too much and it's too late.

The contractions start, hard and deep as she engulfs him entirely. He swells even more in her mouth and Cuddy feels the urgent surge the second before he loses control. She closes her lips around him as he pulses, swallowing the salt and sweet of his release, keeping close as his body quiets, spiraling circles around his injured ankle, stroking his shin through the last shudder until the ecstasy evaporates and he's left empty and whole and almost happy.

House lies silent, stifling his own lascivious compliments about her oral ingenuity. She returns to his side, breathing into his ear as if to confide something. Only the fragment of a word is heard then she collapses, half her body draped over his. He can feel the soft curve of her breasts against his ribs, the calm cadence of her breathing, her hair soft against his jaw. His arm curls around her tight and protectively as they both drift helplessly, finally into a dreamless sleep.

-

Cuddy's first trimester has become her second with the arrival of April and slow fade into spring. She schedules another ultrasound for her eighteenth week,to find out the gender of the twins. She's hoping for a boy and a girl but as long as they're healthy, she'll be happy.

The appointment will be a present to herself, her birthday's the week before. Now she's showing inconspicuously and it's less than a challenge to conceal, paradoxically a relief and a worry that it's still a secret. There's a ridiculous amount of stress about being found out, especially by Wilson, who's suspected something's aloof all along.

Several times she's tried to talk to House about what she should say when she has to say something but each of his answers contradicts the previous and he just sweats and chokes and changes the subject. Cuddy knows he's wavering as much as her about what they're willing to admit, and, about what they want.

Announcing the advantageous accident may end it. People will have expectations, they will be waiting for their acceptance of convention tied and true, or for the more likely unorthodox severing of ties. When she does explain, she'll have to lie.

But when the babies are born with his blue eyes and an affinity for puzzle solving, it will be an undeniable and living truth.

-

"Don't backwash."

A useless plea as they glean what they both want from her refrigerator, House a swig of milk and Cuddy a cache of candy.

"Do you know how many calories are in those things?"

"Shut up. I'm eating for three."

"Three what, whales?"

Ignoring him easily, she tears the wrapper off of another Zagnut and washes it down with a enormous scoop of ice cream, the quart in her lap as she settles into her corner of the couch. Before she can devour more, House pries the candy bar out of her left hand and takes a bite, plunged into his own _madeleine_ moment as he chews.

"Do you remember–––––" He starts, but stops, forcing himself to forget, waiting for the advent of amnesia, a time when their yesterday won't make a difference.

Maybe it doesn't really matter now. Side by side they're starting new. They're relationship is an empty room, he realizes in a reticent beat, a room with no doors.

Their love is a wall.

"I remember you in scrubs," Cuddy says, interrupting his interior monologue and the metaphor.

"And sneaking into the surgery observation room. I remember falling asleep while you tuned your guitar instead of studying."

House forces a reluctant smile, a wave of sorrowful wist about to wash over him.

"I remember graduation."

"I'm sorry," he says low and immediate. He means it.

"For what? You had to leave, Hopkins–––––"

"I'm not sorry I left Michigan. I'm sorry I left you."

The confession escapes involuntarily and, sensing that the too serious is seguing into the sentimental, he deflects.

"And I'm sorry you slept with that Biology prof. What was his name? Hutchinson?"

"Hamilton," corrects Cuddy, putting the ice cream and candy aside.

"What ever happened to him?" House asks rhetorically.

"He stayed married. Wrote a book. They named a library after him a few years ago when he died of congestive heart failure."

"You've been back?"

She nods. Only now does she realize that they grew up together, they've grown old together. House has been there, tightening that tourniquet around her heart, barging into her office, at her door or window in the middle of the night, she always let him in.

Now he's letting her in. He's reaching for her, faintly and from far away, but more than before.

Cuddy tries to hear what they'll call each other, some day, if anything other than the surnames they've adopted as doctors, Sweetsauce and Partypants, Cuddles and Sugar Cane. She tries to imagine them in ten years when the gray has conquered what's left of his hair and the bald spot broadens, when their babies are getting braces and they look back like now, wondering how it all began and forced forward into the future.

'Marry me,' she wants to whisper, watching House unfold in front of her, leaning in and laying his mouth on her lips mid-proposal. In the fraction of a second it takes her to kiss him back he realizes he'll never be whole or happy without her, he needs her, he wants her.

He loves her.

His fingers tangle in her hair as her palms flatten against his face and his mouth opens. He almost says it but his tongue just traces the corners of her lips tasting chocolate and sugar and all the sweetness she's never lost.

They make love, tender through the diffused serenity of the spring night. Slow and blurred they move, his lips on her throat when she gasps, trembling. The flutter of muscles, one last kiss and she looks him in the eyes. Beyond a shadow of doubt, he's hers, more than ever, more than anyone. Then in a weightless, perfect, unforgettable instant they're coming together and falling apart, in love deeper than they've ever been.

As they lay in bed after and he thinks once again about Ann Arbor; the spires and statues and vineclad labyrinth of lecture halls, House is torn. He's angry at the injustice of youth being wasted on the young and trying to tell when middle age crept up on them. Memory, marriage, meaning–––––from nothing they've been recaptured, reconsidered, conceived. Indecision is keeping him here, doubt more than hope and tomorrow most of all.

-

House manipulates the situation, staying and convincing her to stay even after his ankle's healed. Never uttering the word itself, he plays the cripple card, legitimizing his indignity and struggling to appreciate her presence.

There is still the question of how long this will hold.

He never touches her belly. It's awkward the way he avoids it, because it's not unavoidable yet, just imperceptibly rounded. Afraid of making it real, of feeling what's still impossibly fragile, it's also his way of staving off the imminent,standing in the doorway of a nine month waiting room, too nervous to sit down.

The hormones have her happy and laughing at the things that would normally infuriate her. They're closer in a way he can't describe, whether it's trust or tolerance or just what happens when two people conceive two more.

She stays at his place often enough, and pees frequent enough that he's gotten used to putting the toilet seat down. Days ago when he dropped a drink onto his hardwood floor, his first thought was that the broken glass looked like diamonds. No matter how hard he tries to shake it, he can't help but feel engaged.

-

The cafeteria is crowded. House is hovering beside Wilson with an empty stomach and emptier pockets as they get lunch.

"How'd you do it?"

"What?" Wilson asks, preoccupied with paying.

"How'd you ask all the ex-Mrs. Wilsons to be Mrs. Wilsons?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm writing your biography. This chapter is called 'The Many Marriages of Boy Wonder Oncologist.'

Really, what made them all say yes?" Asks House as they sit.

Wilson rubs his brow and takes a bite, incredulous about House's curiosity but certain interrogating him will reveal nothing. The truth can only be extracted by the truth. this

"My first wife," he starts slow and reluctantly.

"It was my last year at McGill. She came to the hospital early. I'd been there for days. She brought me coffee and lunch and said goodbye. She was leaving to visit her sister for a few weeks, in Florida...

When I saw her turn and walk away, I knew I couldn't let her. I got down on one knee and–––––"

"You asked her to marry you when you were sleep deprived and still a student?"

"Yes," nods Wilson.

"What did you say?"

"I told her I loved her, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, and asked if she would marry me when she came back."

'The rest of you life? See that's where marriage is the most flawed, people are liars and hypocrites, in a church, wearing white, deluded by the myths of religion, fidelity and forever. There _is_ no forever, there's only now.' House cerebrates, but doesn't say.

Instead he rolls his eyes and reaches for the other half of Wilson's sandwich, his mind filling with cynical criticisms but a certain adoration for his friend filling his face.

"What about your second wife?"

_**celluloid catalyst**_

By the time he finally steps through the door, the sun has set and House finds himself half hoping Cuddy is inside, curled up on his couch with takeout and waiting for three words, or one question, waiting for everything he'll never say.

But the apartment is unlit and lonely, his ankle aching but better and what was becoming a comfortable routine, as temporary as anything.

The fridge is empty and his cupboards too so House quells his hunger by ordering a pizza and passing thirty minutes searching for a souvenir.

'_Let It Bleed_' was a rolling, rebellious response to the Beatles' '_Let It Be._' The cover of the Stones album has a film canister, a clock face, a pizza and a tire all under a cake with kitsch icing, the band itself performing on the highest tier.

Vinyl and dessert, and what he sees is the marriage motif he can't evade.

The inside of the LP sleeve reads: "This record should be played loud." So he adjusts the volume, drops the needle and waits. After an evocative '_Gimme Shelter,' _'_Love in Vain_' starts, all blues and beauty, the Robert Johnson cover reminding him of his impossibly distant youth.

House continues excavating through dusty relics in the back of his closet. What he finds next is his old super-8 projector and a box of faded reels, the House's home movies. Plugging in the projector he never forgot how to thread, he aims the lens at the white wall, turns out the light and sits beside the noisy archaic Eiki, feeling ten years old again.

A tragic enterprise, like the conflict between space and time, memory and forgetting, was the phase when his obsession was capturing and cataloguing all the moments he knew wouldn't last. Photographing, tape recording and watching when they were miles away from the memory, in childhood he abandoned the futile pursuit of injecting permanence into the fleeting, into a life where he was condemned to flit from country to country, school to school, never standing still, never supposed to stay.

Habits die hard, he knows as he tries to count how many years he's been in Princeton. The first reel starts, scratched and silent and Christmas.

Eager hands part tinsel, ripping off wrapping paper and revealing Clue, a clue itself for his need to play games. Spliced nostalgia, next is his turntable, his guitar, another Christmas. Bowling with his buddies and their brothers then flying, the camera tilts as the turbulence of the plane shakes the steady hands of the incorrigible cameraman.

A series of reminiscences, at eighteen frames per second, he watches the way a general might look back upon a campaign, praising his victories and cursing his defeats. It was war, always. Even accomplished moments were mirthless. Thinking of the hardships, the insufferable tribulations, the abuse, House never knew who he really was, only what no one even suspected.

The last tangible remnant of an era he's spent too long trying to forget is John glaring at the curious boy behind the lens. Even then he had to know he'd never have a son who'd follow in his footsteps, become a pilot or a Marine or war hero.

John was no one but still more than House can be. He stayed, sacrificing some part of his passion for another purpose, parenthood. He married Blythe, which meant something. But he made her miserable, so hopeless that she could alleviate her misery only with infidelity.

Panic grips House. He has no idea how present Cuddy will let him be. She'll be showing soon, too soon, and he has to act, before she explains the pregnancy without paternity, before she speaks and protects him, leaving him nothing but an expendable liability.

I love you would be enough, no grand gesture's necessary, but he can't stop thinking about diamonds and sapphires and her birthday gift. It's not sentiment or romance but it is an option, an anomaly amid his nihilism spreading like cancer and committing may be the only cure.

The flickering images project his own incapacity as a potential parent, the familial films are his celluloid catalyst. How can he be a father when he never had a father, only a fraud?

He wants to tell Cuddy about John, about everything. But it's a lame excuse. The fear of failing shouldn't exculpate him from fatherhood. He did this hoping to make her happy, and for once, only once, never considered how it would affect him, how it would change him.

But his alibi shouldn't be a lie. His choice won't affect only his, but her future, their _futures, _and the plurality makes him panic more.

Redefining their relationship risks losing everything––––––Cuddy, the kids, himself. If he has to choose between being a dad and being a doctor, the choice is made. He can't be both. Whether it's rejection or responsibility he's running away from, House rushes out a coward, who can't commit, going to confess, about to forfeit it all.

_**shadow of a doubt (future tense) **_

A fistful of vicodin meets his mouth. It's the most he's taken since this all started. Almost five months, and four before it even begins. His cane's forgotten, hanging on the door of his closet beside the crate full of vinyls and the rest of his yesterday's souvenirs.

House catches his reflection in Cuddy's screendoor, his pale face warmed by the dim incandescent porch light, almost unrecognizable. He looks scared. He looks old.

He doesn't know who she wants him to be. When she was still attempting the IVF, he knew she wanted to ask him to be a donor. He intimated, unsubtly that he was willing, even expecting, but she hesitated, she never asked.

She knew he couldn't change.

And he hasn't, knocking, knowing the future she wants to be bright would only be bleak if he doesn't leave. She'll be better of with out him. They all will.

Cuddy opens the door, an unsuspecting smile shaping her face. Even in a baggy sweatshirt and pajama bottoms she's beautiful, ranting about maternity leave before House can say a word.

"If they're boys, we'll need new clothes..." She says, pacing to the nursery and he follows close behind. It's the first time she's used the word 'we,' and though contracted, it doesn't go unnoticed by the man panicked by everything plural.

She continues voicing her errands and concerns. She still needs to buy a second crib, more bibs, bottles, baby wipes. Wilson will need to be told to buy another duck. House, on the less serious remark thinks of saying she'll finally get the stretchmarks with the shopping, but doesn't want to leave a single mother so dejected.

On the way out of the room, his heart falters––––––a need, deep and desperate urges him against the whole logic of his life to fall to his knees and beg for a future, for a forever, with her, with _them_.

"Cuddy, I–––––"

He trips on a rug, or his ego, or the mistake he's about to make, and hits the ground hard, staggering at the intersection between salvation and sabotage.

"I can't marry you."

Bruised knees and something breaks, the pain escalating up his legs, piercing his heart until pain and compunction circulate, bypassing all other emotions as he searches for the words.

"I want...

In the silent beat they wait, reaching that inevitable point in every heart-history when the future narrows, when they finally see who they were is not who they are anymore.

House makes no attempt to move; an obscure reluctance restrains him. If any thought emerges from the tumult it's that he's always been like this, paralyzed, pathetic, pleading to be pushed away. They're still the same two people, not made one by biology, forbearances, their jobs or abnegations, but caught in a contingent undertow together, resisting yet clinging as they drown in their doubt.

"..._You_. But you deserve someone who isn't..._me_, miserable, misanthropic, indefinitely emotionally unavailable. I'm a drug addicted doctor who wouldn't even have a job, if, who's not willing––––––

I..."

Can't raise a kid. Can't make you happy. Can't be your doctor and your––––

"I can't do this."

House stands with his head bowed, never meeting her teared filled eyes.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, walking away from the woman who saved him, the woman who made him, the only one who loves him as he leaves, unconditionally, through every end, even when there's no hope of a new beginning.

Regret reigns as she lets him go, watches him limp, knowing the leg isn't the only struggle, that he feels compelled to be denied happiness. A phobia of permanence more than change, it's the reason House's heart is something she can never have.

-

The ride home is reckless, speeding through the suburbs hoping he crashes, his conscience is retaliating against the line, the line he should never have crossed. That line dissects his life, no definite second on the clock but an exigent, invisible border, on the other side of which he stands alone now, agonizingly aware that it takes ridiculously little, an insignificant breeze to make what a man would put down his life for one moment seem an absurd void the next.

All their love's in vain.

-

The next day passes like a punishment. The wall of their love is still standing but succeeding only in separating their broken hearts, two empty rooms.

Cuddy sits solitary on her couch, still unaware what she did wrong. She never asked him to commit, to quit, to sacrifice anything. With her hand over her stomach, she can't cry. She can't call him either.

Through the window end of April showers have darkened into a deluge. The rain flows through her like it did years ago, the first time he said he couldn't stay, the last time he left her behind.

She never saw their relationship as symbiotic. There's no word for it really, it just seemed to make sense. And it still does in a way, she knows he has a reason for running, rational, objective and probably right. That much Cuddy knew she could never change.

It's her birthday, the end of another year as boss and not bride, and the irony doesn't escape her, diamond is her birthstone.

The timing makes it feel like a crisis, but she can hardly grieve. There's too much to do in the balancing act of medicine and maternity and the occasional kick in the ribs that reminds her why it's all worth it.

-

Monday morning she goes for the ultrasound, hoping to end the speculation about the sex of the twins. Restless in the waiting room, Cuddy doesn't lose her temper until she's pressed about paternity. It's too much to tell the truth but she finds she can't lie either.

A calm comes after the chaos when she sees two lives, a part of her and it's all put into perspective. Dr. Richardson quietly tells her the gender of each twin as Cuddy wipes away a tepid teardrop.

-

Later that night, House breaks and enters into Dr. Richardson's office, finding Cuddy's file and searching for the ultrasound image.

"Happy Birthday, Cuddy," he says to her name printed at the top of the chart.

Lifting it closer to the light, he rotates the prenatal portrait, squinting as a smile steals his somber expression. The black and white and unclear picture brings him to the brink of tears. For the first time House feels like an expectant parent, an aspiring father. He knows he made a mistake by leaving because in that moment the twins aren't just hers. They're his, his baby boys.


	8. Fate

Notes: Thank you for patiently waiting for this. Sorry it took so long. My muse was being held hostage but I paid the ransom so here it goes. Please forgive any medical errors. I'm not a doctor or a med student so scales will tip in the direction of drama, not medicine. I should also note that although this is essentially a post ep for 5x11, I've incorporated (subtly and because it's taken so long to write) spoilers up to 5x21, so it's paradoxically a canon AU  
(e.g. no Kutner, etc). Only one chapter left! Thank you for reading! Please review & enjoy!

* * *

**VIII. Fate**

Doctors don't believe in forever.

The future is finite. Days are numbered, emotion irrational and love a fleeting lie. Time passes in quantifiable moments and a scientist's priorities are diagnoses and cures. _Never_ is a statistical description, negated too often against all odds.

Doctors interpret evidence, confront the culprit and heal the hurt. Chronic and terminal are explanations with _always_ the understood meaning. Except always isn't scientific; it's subjective, relative to the rest of their lives.

The constancy of a disease becomes the fragile fate of the individual and _fatal _an adjective implying the imminent end of a life. Incurable, protracted and persistent–––the future as infinity exists only in the context of mortality, founded on the assumption that, without any proof otherwise, this is it.

The illusion that there's more than suffering, that life is more than a straight line toward extinction, most are consoled by. But doctors find comfort in their flawed logic, in the nonexistence of eternity, in the paradox of an always without a forever.

House is no exception.

Semantics justify his objectivity. In medicine his detached brilliance is a gift. In his personal life, it has too often been a handicap. Waxing wistful and looking back, he's uncovered old ambitions and unrealized dreams, seeing how much happiness he's denied himself by guarding the gap separating science and sanguinity, the schism that dissects what his mind knows and his heart feels.

_**vision of division**_

Alone again, sinking in the possibility of always, he drinks. Retrospection has become introspection; Cuddy, children and his conscience a profound gravity grounding him to every wasted minute now that they're out of his grasp.

He shouldn't have let go.

A month apart, they've hardly seen each other. The first two weeks he avoided her by doing his job, even clinic. The one case he had lacked ethical conflict and was an easy solve.

The last two weeks she hid, from him and the hospital. She held meetings via video conference, had nurses delivering all essential documents and resorted to artifice when rushing in before the clinic opened and out in the crowd with a bag or folder in front of her. Cuddy's showing, quite conspicuously. Even from behind the desk it's obvious. Her face is fuller, her breasts are brimming out of her bra and her belly is overtly rotund.

On Mother's Day two dozen pink roses cluttered her desk, stoking the curiosity of anyone who noticed and rousing her relief in the apologetic sentiment, though the card was unsigned and no amends made.

House peeks into her office when he can, wondering how much her ass has expanded but knowing he can't insult her without incriminating himself.

It's not really a mystery. Most of the staff suspect she's expecting and those who know have initiated rumors about who the patronizing patriarch might be. But by dodging the inquisition and never confirming or admitting the crime, Cuddy is postponing the inevitable explanation for as long as possible.

In the meantime House stalks her. His vigilant voyeurism is a compulsion, like a unlikely manifestation of Couvade's. Sympathy or concern, regret is the underlying reason to spy on her.

Somedays he builds up the courage to call and gets her voicemail, hanging up if she answers. Most nights he makes it there after she's eaten; a salad, whole grain rice, a nutritious main course, then sugar in sixteen varieties.

It's almost visible, the disappearing dream, the open door he slammed shut. The opportunity has passed for bended knees and diamond rings and ever making this right, making it work. A splintering gouge, the wound of what he should have done goes deeper than his heart. And though he's always in pain, he knows this will be more than just another scar.

One night Cuddy breaks her routine and leaves after a long shower, wearing a silk trimmed tie-back black dress, gorgeous as only she could be in maternity clothes. House follows her to a restaurant, some upscale, five-star French place he never knew Princeton had.

By the time he finds a place to park, it's raining. Not hard enough that he can't see his round and glowing boss sitting with what appears to be her date. Salt and pepper hair, square and shaven jaw, green eyes, he's someone in her league. House watches paralyzed in the downpour, a blurred silhouette on the other side of the glass, waiting, for what, he doesn't know. This isn't betrayal, he begged her to hate him. But never expected her to. He isn't ready to be replaced, not by some well- manicured, unendurably polite stranger she met online and has known five minutes.

Not yet.

Cuddy's immodest appetite interrupts his authentic and total surprise, postponing the exigent impulse to sabotage what he's seeing. When she pauses between dinner and dessert, their conversation becomes more animated and she smiles, coyly caressing the man's hand.

Jealousy, huge and harrowing grips House. The door of the restaurant swings open. He stammers drenched past the maître d' and stomps to a standstill beside their table.

"You know she's pregnant, right?" House asks the man before Cuddy can react, before she even sees him.

"With at least _two_ shrieking, shitting bundles of neediness," shaking the water off his leather jacket and onto her dinner date's plate.

Determined to make a scene, commit a crime if necessary, he never looks at Cuddy, never considers the consequences.

"_Twins_, " he inflects louder. "That's a combined sentence of at least thirty- six years. Sure, you get a few tax breaks but I mean, is it really worth it? You don't even know if the kids are yours. I've seen the ultrasound and they look suspiciously like this oncologist she works with–––"

House is cutoff by the only sound more shrill than his voice. A pager. Cuddy's date's pager. The man looks at it then Cuddy.

"I have to take this," he starts, standing.

"Have a nice night Dr. House. I'll see you in September, Lisa."

She smiles and nods, grateful the dripping juvenile standing beside her requires no explanation.

"Was it something I said?" House asks as he sits, replacing his would-be replacement and proud.

"So, want to have dinner sometime?" He asks next.

The question is casually sincere. She squints incredulously at the whole situation.

"I could rent a bulldozer, you bring a shovel and a fork," diffusing the sincerity.

Silence.

"I'll take that as a no."

He starts to stand and walk away.

"House. Sit down."

Cuddy knew they couldn't avoid each other forever. She was expecting this. She was _hoping_ for this. It's why she made it so formal. Match point, she thinks. She can play his games as a worthy opponent after all these years.

"It wasn't a date. It was a consult. Thompson just transferred here from New York Mercy. He's a pediatrician.

And _I'm_ the one paying."

"Well in that case... garçon, a menu please!"

House inches his seat in and grins, the territorial possessiveness of minutes before transitioning into something much more familiar. Then, as if the time apart is already forgotten, they eat dinner, erasing once and for all the miserable vision of division.

_**clandestine destiny**_

Following their covert and unconventional reconciliation, an unfamiliar optimism takes hold and House contemplates the fallout of finally being held accountable.

At work they coexist in suspicious harmony. No fights, no banter, no thrust and parry. Cuddy preoccupies herself with administration and shopping, buying blue and certain she has two of everything: bassinets, strollers, carseats, cribs, mobiles and baby monitors (more bibs, bottles, pacifiers, nipples, diapers and formula). She's indecisive about possible names for the twins and worried about what she's going to tell her parents about paternity, and when.

On the rare occasion that she comes out of her office, radiant and wobbling, Cuddy explains her breathless steps with the number of months since conception and answers the occasional 'whose,' with a vague and mumbled 'friend.'

Wilson's curiosity however, cannot be placated that easily.

"House did this to you, didn't he?" He asks barging into her office unnoticed.

"Who _did _ this to me is none of your business."

"Are you two a couple? Or is he just..."

"House is still House," she says with laconic veracity.

In the silence punctuating his altruistic interrogation they both realize she never denied his accusation. She never confirmed it either.

"If you've got no questions concerning the hospital, or I don't know,

_your job_, I'm busy. Close the door on your way out."

Wilson leaves confused but no less convinced of the truth. Cuddy spends the rest of the day incapable of concentrating, wondering why House hasn't bragged about his accomplishment to his best friend and what his reticence and the secret kept means.

-

The elevator doors open and chime. House nods to Wilson as he gets on.

"How's the wonderful world of Oncology? Cure cancer yet?"

"House," he says already aggravated by what he knows will be his friend's irresponsibility in a situation that demands an adult.

"Cuddy's pregnant," House discloses nonchalantly, as if he's uninvolved in the revelation and simply stating the obvious.

"I know. It's yours."

"She told you that?"

"She didn't have to. House, what are you doing? Sleeping with the boss has consequences. Impregnating her isn't like clinic duty, you can't negotiate your way out of it."

"_Them_," House corrects.

"What?"

"She's having twins."

They reach the fourth floor. House blinks at Wilson's slack jaw and limps off the elevator.

-

Through her second trimester, Cuddy can conceive nothing but disdain for

the opposite sex. And for sex in general. She can't stand the thought of the sweat, the writhing, the rising and fleeting release because it ends with this: nine months of being fat, achy, moody. The degree of discomfort is multiplied to the point where celibacy seems like the only choice.

Sometimes she hates House. The man who did this _for_ her also did this _to_ her.

But after the intolerably long days and early mornings, late meetings, politics and long demoted medicine, a smile always steals her expression. Whether she's lathering her stomach in the shower or struggling to sleep on her back, Cuddy remembers how far she's come, how long she's wanted this and can truly see the bigger picture.

-

Their relationship is constantly changing. Progress, it's not the pursuit of romance but it hasn't been reduced to platitudes and pity sex either. The truth is that the indefinable is all right for now. Ambiguous love is boundless (and unconditional by definition).

House comes over, but they never take their clothes off. His interest is comparable to the solicitude of a chaperone, only more irritating. He pesters her when she's sitting, knowing she can't stand quick enough to strangle him and says he there because she's too huge to do much though he's really little help. He tries. Somedays she works remotely and he knocks on her door, justifying it with needing permission, a signature, a endocrinologist's specialized opinion. Really he's being protectively paranoid, doing a visual assessment of her vitals, more aware than ever of the complications that come with carrying multiples.

Several times the case is simple and he lets his team handle it, spending a few hours with the incubator of the next generation of his genes. He bathes but never stays. When he's in the tub, she paces in and out of the bathroom to pee. And pee again. Five times is the record for one soak with case notes. He usually ignores her, pretending to be bothered by her presence in her own home but House still can't help but feel there's something obscenely ordinary about what they're doing.

As if he's fallen under the weight of a schoolboy crush, he's carrying her books and walking her home from class, petrified of losing his one last chance. At night he goes home. There's not enough room for him in her bed and it's not until they're close in the dark that he realizes he's uninvited.

House knows almost everything before her. He steals the ultrasounds and pilfers her OB's notes. He's becoming involved, more intentionally than before. She wants to call him on it, to mention legality, child support, custody, commitment. There are so many unanswered questions. How present does he want to be? Should she introduce him as their dad? Their biological father? A donor or just a friend?

The contrived accident of conception is keeping the reality of it all–––love, life, the inevitability of them together–––clandestine.

Or just destined.

-

The reelings of her emotional mind are all reminiscence. There was a time she thought she lost House. Not when he left for Hopkins, but the first time he was admitted into her hospital. She brought him back from the brink of death but he wasn't alone. The constitutional lawyer, the proxy who took her advice stood by him. Even after the surgery she never saw him leaving Stacy.

Cuddy thought he'd forgotten what they had in Michigan, until now. When House tripped in the nursery more than a month ago, her life flashed before her eyes.

A montage of moments lived and dreams to be relived, she saw the green tennis court of the summer they met, the red brick of her residence hall, the yellow and blue flat lines on an EKG, she saw scars and sutures and the soft ambient light of a September morning shining across a rocking chair, her holding one sleeping son and House, House in that same nursery holding the other.

In the brevity that brought him to his knees, she experienced the transitory elation of sending out invitations, the subtext of her signature on Stacy's reading: I did it. I stayed. He pushed, he shoved, he ran away. But I did what you couldn't, what you wouldn't.

Then the bright white vindication of her wedding day.

But like a promise broken before it was made, House spoke. He left like he always does and she knows he'll never change as much as she knows she'll never stop loving him.

-

The season that started wet is now green. Cuddy buys a belly sling. The crisscross support lessens the pain in her lower back but does nothing for balance or discomfort otherwise. Her stomach has become an obstacle and in lieu of relations it's all flirtation. Anytime they're in proximity to his pupils or his palms, House laments having to share her breasts soon and Cuddy gets used to the thud and squeak of his cane as it echoes through her foyer and up stairs, stopping in the doorway of her bedroom.

Even in the most unflattering moments, the constant of his blatant honesty is a relief. "You can't turn me off that easily," he assures her when the pregnancy flatulence is audible and he keeps nuzzling her neck, scraping her shoulder with the beard and leaving his mark, his hand on her chest but high and over her heart.

Eventually Cuddy calls her sister, begging for privacy a while longer, still procrastinating about admitting this to her parents. They first heard about House over winter break more than twenty years ago. And they know what a living hell he's made her life for the last thirteen. They'll want answers she can't give them.

Tangerine embers kindle behind cotton clouds, the June sun rises. They awaken together, basked in the solstice, having fallen asleep on her couch late the night before. The weight of Cuddy leaning on him isn't what wakes House. She's canted across him, pinning one hand between her hip and his left leg. The other is pressed against her stomach and it's the turbulent kick of a fraternal twin, then another, that opens his eyes. He keeps his palm there, cupped over the curve above her protruding belly button, feeling the unborn commotion, the tangibility of their restless fates. Then Cuddy knows. She knows without a doubt that he got her pregnant on purpose and more, she knows the only truth that matters: he loves her.

Half awake, he demotes the momentary awe and draws his fingers lower, resting them as high on her thigh as he can. Her hand brushes over his, until their fingers fit together and as they both resolve to sleep in House, for the first time, considers that maybe, they're not better off without him.

The soft moment leaves him hard. And hesitant. House has never had sex with a pregnant woman. Fear of the Oedipal implications is one reason, the other is simply that he's never been asked. He thought his physical attraction to her would have waned by now, but it hasn't. Even as she hobbles and huffs, with all the grace of a gravid, Cuddy is beautiful.

Logistically, he decides, the carnal would be exponentially complicated between a woman pregnant with twins and a less than agile cripple. He broods about how they would balance, but never tries. Her barrier belly's not the only reason a distance stands between them. Since they reconciled, House has finally realized that he gave himself to her so completely, so exclusively, almost involuntarily, that he felt caught. And from that trap he escaped only to find it wasn't quicksand but a second chance, disguised salvation.

-

By her third trimester, Cuddy's libido has boomeranged back around, with such a vengeance that the vaguest friction (or fantasy) sets her off. Worse than the encumberant dilemma of her stomach is her insomnia. The hormones and heavy hindrance have her tossing and turning all night, every night. She's lucky if she gets a few hours. And there's nearly three months of this left, if she carries to full- term.

Tonight she takes a shower, hoping the steam will relax and relieve. But, frustrated and concupiscent even as she steps out, she decides to seek relief elsewhere. The bottom drawer of her nightstand is at arm's length and she reaches, blindly awkward, returning with her vibrator. Dusting off the pink jelly, she shifts, attempting to adjust and hoping she can at least manage masturbation in her condition.

The familiarity of the incessant noise precedes the feeling, a sad substitute as she bites her bottom lip against months worth of tension. She hitches up one knee, struggling still to reach, and hisses when the vibe finally makes contact with her clit.

Her dripping hair comes loose as she arches her neck, pushing harder, twisting her wrist to keep it there. Half-panting, her knees are wide apart and nothing's concealed by the sheet except her bare feet. When the first flutter of pleasure ripples through her, her heart races and her head's filled with House. In her fantasies, he's always been. But never like this; never so elaborate, so domestic. She wants to watch him sleep in after he's spent days awake solving a case. She wants his cane hanging in her doorway and his dirty socks dangling over the edge of her hamper. She wants to step into the shower and wrap her arms around him, let them glide lower, counting off his pulse as he throbs in her palm until her back's against the steamed tile and he's a searing stream spilling inside her then there's nothing they can do but melt together on wet sheets. She wants a ring but not a wedding, meaning without matrimony, everything she's dreamed of but never expected.

Her hand trembles at the thought; House here because he wants to be, permanently. The fantasy refocuses on the physical, their last time, their first time, each memory more vivid than the one before. Too long, she thinks, as she brings herself close then backs off. This is going to be mindblowing after such a long sex-starved sabbatical. Cuddy calls her own bluff, closes her eyes and turns the vibrator up a notch.

"What are you doing?"

The voice at the foot of the bed, unexpected and amused, sends a startled thrill through her, a jolt of adrenaline and a flood of guilt. House limps to turn the light on, holding takeout, jaw gaping below ecstatic eyes.

"Nothing," she tries calm and collected, as if she isn't caught.

Getting a glimpse of the toy as she slams the bedside drawer shut, House snickers. She knows he'll never let her outlive this. Speechless still, with no cane and quiet sneakers, he comes closer.

"How humiliating. You must be disgusted," Cuddy mutters, rubbing her eyes, her hand doing little to conceal her bright blushing face.

"Sure. If by disgusted you mean extremely turned on."

"What?"

Slanting as if this isn't one of his most frequent fantasies, House opens the drawer, retrieves the still warm and slippery toy and sinks into the bed, settling below her hips.

Cuddy makes no sound but a weak whimper as quiet embarrassment dissolves into a battery operated buzz. She can't see but imagines House is examining it, curious what the device has that he doesn't. She prepares herself for snide insults or some other form of torture, him using this against her somehow. But mute he remains, waiting for her dread to become anticipation.

Just as she relaxes, his fingers reach for her first, incapable of resisting skin on skin, flesh in flesh, the carnal over the mechanical. She's exquisitely wet as they slide in smooth and she tightens around him instantly. He thrusts once then stops, his knuckles curling so that the tips of his fingers find that spot inside her just as the vibrator reaches her clit.

Heaving hips try to rise but just wriggle as she writhes above the latex tip. House calms the erratic urgency by letting his tongue trace her honeyed lips. Cuddy clutches at her thighs, an impatient noise made desperate by the internal and external stimulation, a perfect synchrony, overwhelming now because she's so sensitive, so close, curling her toes until her calves cramp, swallowing the surrender she wants to scream. He pulls his fingers out at the last second and she shudders, lightheaded, high, happy after all that he's here.

House hovers, rising reluctantly and lost in the thought of what he's going to do next. He wants to brush his thumbs over her nipples while he tastes the undersides of her breasts, warm from the shower and damp with a clear coat of colostrum. He wants to see the sudden stillness come over her face the moment before orgasm, for her to shout his name, to need him, to want him, to make him come. He wants her to love him.

For this, for everything, forever.

Struggling to stave off the sentimental, he undresses immediately and ineloquently, mumbling something about cervical softening easing the travails of childbirth. She stretches to turn the lamp off as he climbs up and collapses, grounded to the mattress beside her.

A maladroit and horizontal dance, they finally settle on their sides, House sweaty as he realizes he'd forgotten how much he missed this. Aligned, in love and listless, with a frictionless lunge they reconnect.

Blurred escalation, the rough rasp of his hair against the back of her legs is a distraction from the scar she knows is just as present. He sets a tentative rhythm, stroking in slow and shallow, uncertain if the pregnancy changes anything. But the constricting squeeze of wet heat enveloping him is reassuring and the momentum soon accelerates.

Feeling susceptible because she can't see him, Cuddy reaches for his hand, lifting if off her hip and locking their fingers together, holding on, ready to let go. She sways back, meeting his calculated, tandem thrusts.

House's breath hot against her ear, his lips on her back, kissing her shoulder, hips rocking into hers–––physical, the intense crest and collision of emotions soaring toward inevitable simultaneity and she knows nothing will ever be the same.

'God'Greg'I love you,' he thinks he hears, then he's there, on the verge of reciprocation, but doubting every heightened sense, as he strains to not say it.

Instead he quenches the impulse with a kiss, leaning into her lips just as he feels her stomach tighten and her uterus contract, concentrating on nothing but her, the clench of muscles and clasp of hands, he pivots into the kiss, watching as he takes her breath away.

Cuddy's eyes are closed and her mouth is open and before he can blink he's coming with her, pumping, pouring, then still, home and whole, hoping, _hoping_ this never has to end.

When what's always felt like a risk only feels right, House wonders how this became more than real, the exact moment that the rush spread to his heart, making it ache when he can't be with her, giving it an incentive to keep him alive, a reason to race––three reasons to hope the promise never breaks, her unspoken vow to never let it beat alone.

All he knows is that he loves her, more than he can believe, more than he could ever express, more than he's ever loved anyone.

"Always," he breathes because it's all he's thinking, the only word that means anything right now. Closer, he whispers again against her quivering lip, grazing his cheek across hers as they gradually come down together.

For a long time they stay like this, spring starlight vignetting all of Cuddy's curves, a pale highlight outlining the swell of her stomach. When he does shift, it's out of restlessness from the sore unforgiving reminder of his leg, not unease with the intimacy. Even the pain isn't enough to keep him from lying a sated, smiling shadow.

Before they can drowse off into tempting placid oblivion, Cuddy reaches over and turns the bedside light on. She lies illuminated a suspended minute, afterglow fading imperceptibly into gravid glow.

"I'm having a C-section," she eventually admits.

So cervical softening doesn't matter.

"Twin A is breech."

"Twin A? From the Hebrew meaning: I have no idea what I'm naming my child."

"I have some ideas," she says and waits.

"Conrad."

House's gaze softens as he tries to hear Conrad Cuddy being paged to the principal's office, or an operating room. He leers at her approvingly.

"I'm open to suggestions," she says, when she can't quite read his agreement.

"Twin A works for me," he says quickly, suspect of where the post- coital nomenclature discussion is leading. And right.

"What do you want to do House?"

"A second round would be nice, if you're up for it. Hand me my–––"

"Not what I meant," she cuts him off. He bows his head and rubs his thigh, feigning dejection with a sigh.

"I know."

"You have been an unrelenting nuisance from the start. And your motives don't seem selfish. It's almost as if you feel a sense of responsibility. You know you're as much a part of this as me. If you want to be. Do you want to be?"

"Do you want me to want to be?"

Exasperation deepens her still flushed cheeks. It's not resignation but Cuddy doesn't have the patience to have every question answered with another question. Her head plummets into a pillow and she closes her eyes.

"I don't... " he starts after a long static pause.

"I don't want to make you miserable. I don't want to be miserable anymore.

I want to be with you."

Insecure after the self-disclosure, he waits. When he can't hold his breath anymore, he leans over and sees he's cured her insomnia. She's finally fallen asleep, settled snug in his arms and evading a fated confession another night.

-

A love bred of isolation, it evolves. In the morning they part with shrugged shoulders and a crooked pout, sometimes a peck on the cheek. At night they reunite, one of them out of counterfeit inconvenience but neither letting the habit break.

Making love to a pregnant woman is unlike anything else House has ever done. The closest thing he can compare it to is sex on a waterbed, a frustrating feat, all opposition and inertia, but an absurdly worth while experience, for the brief duration it's possible or popular.

When he finally comes it's with an asphyxiated gasp, straining, as if he's suffocating, a sort of suffocation he would greedily perpetuate. The pleasure fades far too fast and House drowses off. Out of envy for his easy sleep she sometimes slaps him.

"This is your fault," she says once to have him turn over, drag his chin up her arm and murmur what she imagines is I love you.

Most times she just watches him sleep, worried that she will always be waiting for him to run away again. Worried more because she wants him to stay but knows she can't always get what she wants.

Neither can House. Cuddy steals the covers, leaving him cold in the air conditioning as summer closes slowly in on them. This will all be over soon, he thinks catching her contagious sleeplessness, a hand on the stillness of her abdomen, hoping the boys will sleep through the night this well once they're born. This will all be over soon and it feels like it hasn't even begun.

If he does spend the night at his apartment alone, House lies spatially constrained and wakes cramped, having committed in his sleep to occupying only one side of the bed. That they have '_sides'_ conjures up the recurring image of that conceptual border again. He knows he's crossed a line but not what it means–––the domestic conventionality of it disgusts him less than the empty space that, in the first glimmer of consciousness, he wishes she could always fill.

Since he's confirmed that she's having a caesarian, House has imagined the day that they'll lie in bed and compare scars, the day they'll see the sum of what they've inflicted on and salvaged for each other. There may never be a day that they both put family before work but together may be the anomaly, the exception to every rule of every other relationship.

-

Warm and bright and open, July shines. Cuddy wakes with the knuckle of his thumb kneading into the arch of her foot. She can't see her swollen ankles over her still rising fundal height but this morning she feels rested for the first time in weeks. House leaves her exhausted, yes. But there's something else, scenes like this, when the intimacy surpasses sex and she realizes she doesn't just sleep better with him because of the physical strain but because of this sense of safety, knowing that with him the worst case scenario is a conquered obsession.

From the bottom of the bed House makes a sarcastic remark about her unshaved legs as he moves up to rub her shins. His touch isn't seductive, but it isn't clinical either. There's curiosity in it, and fear. The opposite of obligation, the only thing that bothers him about being here is that it doesn't bother to be here.

He's to blame for her misery now, but after the first wail in a delivery room, her happiness will be his making. Does she want him there? He thinks of asking, knowing he has to resist the triteness of pacing in the waiting room. Instead of starting a conversation, he climbs up to sit beside her, picking up his pill bottle on the way then spinning it to a slow rattle, he debates whether or not to take his last few vicodin now or later.

She lays her head on his chest after he swallows. Then with sleep in the corners of her eyes as they open, she looks at him. And he sees only her eyes, not her breasts, exposed at the top of the blanket or the few gray strands highlighting the tousled ebony waves of her hair, no imperfections, just potential, the past and future as sapphires and diamonds.

Sadness is all she sees. Pale reluctance behind pain in pools of blue. He blows her bangs away from her eyes and coerces his cheeks into a wry wide-awake half- smile.

"I'm fine. Go to work," Cuddy says, though she can't remember what day of the week it is, or if he has the day off. Her obstetrician prescribed bedrest for the last eight weeks, hoping it will keep her blood pressure, headaches and band pain in check and that she will carry the twins to full term. Though some days she's relieved she has to break doctor's orders though and go in, both to see him and to do her job.

_**ordinary people**_

The hospital is an ironic stage for the first act in the recently rewritten drama of Gregory House's life. Today starts like any other, wasting time with Wilson his, prodding conscience, attempting to avoid clinic and inevitably stumbling upon a mysterious illness.

Except today isn't as ordinary as every other because today everything will change.

On the roof of the hospital, a new hideout, House is eating Wilson's lunch and avoiding interrogative colleagues obnoxiously curious about his role in the Dean of Medicine's maternity. Raucous propulsion and a whirl of wind land on the helipad. The remainder of Wilson's grapes are tossed over the ledge as paramedics carry a man out on a stretcher. House holds the door open, expecting a stereotypical, lawn and garden, severed digits sort of emergency as the patient passes.

What he sees is himself.

Male, caucasian, late sixties, found alone and unconscious in his own vomit after dialing 911–––and, burning beneath the summer sun as the old man's lifeless face turns away–––a sweat soaked strawberry birthmark.

House grabs the chart and admits the man as his patient.

_**scene ii**_

"Who's House with? Asks Taub, staring through glass and suddenly unsure that they don't have a case.

"I don't know. But he looks like..."

"Sean Connery," interjects Wilson, seized by his own epiphany. An expression claims his face that neither Thirteen nor Taub can interpret. After wavering, Wilson walks away.

Inside the patient's room, House closes the blinds and leans heavy on his cane at the bottom of the bed until the old man opens his eyes.

"Did you enjoy the helicopter ride here? I rode in a helicopter once. But it was for the CIA. And I was conscious."

Relief rises out of Alexander's recognition. "You're John's boy."

"Yeah. I'm all grown up now. I've got gray hair and a driver's license and everything. I've even got a girlfriend," he mumbles, bringing the vicodin bottle to his mouth, trying to mask every emotion, block the pain he feels approaching.

"The eulogy you gave at your father's funeral...he was a good soldier. A good man."

"Right. He's dead. You're not. Yet. I need you to answer a few questions if you want to keep it that way."

Alexander nods.

"Before you collapsed, were there any other symptoms?"

"No, not really. Fatigue. And my eyesight's gotten worse but I figured it was just time taking its proverbial toll."

House gets a flashlight and examines his eyes.

"Have you travelled recently, left the country?"

"Not since I retired."

"Have you moved, changed medications, your diet?"

"No."

"He's been living on a steady supply of reubens and scotch for the last thirty years," a third voice announces, entering the room.

"Who are you?" House asks.

"Ben Stahr. I'm his son."

House shifts his stare between his father and brother, inspecting each closer, frozen in the middle of the family reunion.

"Is that it?" Alexander asks. "Because General Hospital is on in five minutes."

He reaches for the remote and House nods, starting out the door. Ben walks over to his dad's bedside, laying down his lunch and noticing something.

"Doctor," he says to get House's attention and holding up a blood filled catheter collection bag.

_**scene iii**_

"New symptoms," House slurs through gritted teeth, scribbling_ ''posterior subcapsular_ _cataracts'_ and '_bloody urine' _under '_vomiting'_ and '_syncope'_ on the white board.

"We have a patient?"

"Alexander Stahr. Graduated West Point top of his class, went to MIT then Vietnam, spent nineteen years amputating shrapnel ridden limbs in the Medical Corps and another eight as Surgeon General of the Navy. Until he got fired, I mean retired six years ago."

"Differential, people."

"Old age," Taub tries.

"Sudden onset of four acute symptoms. Sorry, just being a grandpa is chronic, not acute."

"Lupus. Would explain everything but the vision problems. Which could be explained by old age," Taub tries again.

"Amyloidosis," Thirteen says and House writes it on the board.

"You're the nephrologist, what kidney diseases present with ocular lesions?" Foreman asks.

"Could be Goodpasture," House says.

"Or Wegener's granulomatosis," Thirteen adds.

House shakes his head.

"Foreman, test for Lupus and Amyloidosis."

"And hypernephroma," interrupts Taub with his first decent idea.

"Cancer makes sense," House starts. "Taub and Thirteen, go to his home."

"And look for what? Carcinogens?"

"Sure. Also check for toxins, drugs, anything environmental that might be causing the symptoms.

I'll get an oncologist's consult."

-

Wilson's office is silent, except for the scuff of House's sneakers as he steps in. The first detail he notices is that the '_Vertigo''_ poster has been replaced with '_Ordinary People'_. He can't remember when Wilson changed it, but it only seems relevant now, in the context of his own fraternity. Guilt and brothers, family and the struggle to stay sane when nothing makes sense.

"What was it like seeing your brother for the first time after all these years?"

"Surreal," Wilson answers after a contemplative pause.

"Sad. He didn't know me. Which meant he didn't remember that I was the reason he went off his meds. But it also meant he didn't remember his childhood, family vacations, helping him with his homework, giving him advice on how to get to first base with his first girlfriend. I was a stranger, and he, he was still my brother.

Why?"

House shakes his head, not ready to admit he's found his own long lost sibling.

"How's your patient?" Wilson asks after waiting a while.

House's pager interrupts and decides his reply.

"He's gone deaf in one ear. It's like the old man is sick or something."

"So you've known him a few hours and you're already mocking and berating your biological father?"

"He's not my father," trying to convince himself. "He's...my mother's indiscretion."

House drops Stahr's labs onto Wilson's desk.

"Is this kidney cancer?"

Wilson picks up the file and squints at it.

"Could be. Could also be a hundred other things. Need a scan and biopsy to confirm."

He knows the consult isn't the reason House is here. Cancer is a cover. He needs a conduit to connect what he's refused to see for so long, the clarity to see it and a conscience to make him act.

"Where's he from anyway? Has he been living in Princeton? How'd he end up here?"

"Philadelphia. Paramedic said he asked to be brought here."

Wilson's eyebrows furrow in vague disbelief and cognition of the seemingly intentional contingency.

"He didn't ask for me specifically," House grumbles, not wanting Wilson's or his own mind to venture to the possibility that the old man knew he was dying and wanted a chance to voice his regret about never having a relationship with his first son, or his mother.

"If he didn't ask for you how did you find out he was here?

"I was on the roof when the paramedics landed, eating _your_ lunch."

"And that's not fate? The man who holds the key to the biggest mystery of your life–––_your life_–––shows up miles away from where he lives–––"

"No! Arbitrary circumstances put us in the same place at the same time.

There's no destiny, only the convoluted conspiracy called chance, Jimmy."

"I assume the the nihilism and condescension are hereditary," Wilson speculates when they've reached the end of the existential argument. On the last syllable, House tilts his head, looking past Wilson and suddenly stricken by an epiphany.

He hurries out.

_**scene iv**_

"You have Alport Syndrome," House says to Alexander, reaching for a syringe to take blood.

"What?" Stahr replies, still unable to hear in that ear.

"Test will confirm but it explains everything: cataracts, kidney failure, deafness."

"Alport should have been symptomatic in my thirties."

"This late of a presentation is unusual but not unheard of. You've been gradually losing your hearing for years, and your eyesight is diminishing because of the Alport's not old age," trying for clinical. "Your best chance is a transplant.

Dialysis will keep you alive for a few weeks, maybe a month. "

"I might not survive a transplant."

"You won't survive without one."

Stahr sits stoic, a stagnant uncertainty in the silence–––and dissonance, father and son and time running out.

"I'll try to get you on the list, but your son should get tested," House suggests quietly, walking out and aware the case is solved but not over yet.

_**scene v**_

In the clinic House locks the exam room door. He ties a tourniquet around his arm with his teeth and trembling left hand. Once the blood is drawn he sends it to the lab for three tests. Then he dodges a waiting room full of sick people, returns to his office and waits.

Wilson comes and goes and he passes the rest of the time shaking the magic-8 ball for a second opinion and throwing the tennis ball against the wall. The lab calls before he can page Foreman, but it's too kind a courtesy to say he's already solved it. Taub and Thirteen are homebound on the Jersey turnpike by now, so with no team he goes and gets the test results himself.

Back in the office again and alone, he considers going home but knows he can't. Anxious, he even considers calling Blythe, telling her Alex is here, asking if she loved him, if she still does, why she settled for John and if it was all a mistake. But it's too late and he can't bring his thumb to hit send on the phone. His mother hates confrontation and the answers won't matter now anyway, not really.

"You shouldn't be here," House says when he sees Cuddy's reflection on the glass door as it opens. He's trying for hostile but there's a panicked concern is his tone. She was prescribed bedrest. She shouldn't be here.

"Your new patient, Alexander Stahr. Who is he and why do you want to give him a kidney?"

Holding his own test results and tired of staring at them, he looks up at her.

"Wilson told you." Then, seeing her arm is braced behind her back and her belly looks like she might burst he says, "Sit down."

"There's something I've wanted to tell you. The man whose funeral you drugged me to make me attend, he wasn't my father. My mom had an affair, with the man who's now my patient.

Alexander Stahr is my father. "

"Are you a match?"

"For paternity, not the kidney."

"What's wrong with him?"

"Alport syndrome. It's inherited. I don't have it. _They_ might," staring at her stomach.

Cuddy grows paler. She's sweating now, though the office is air conditioned, and holding her breath, weak from two revelations.

"They might not," she finally replies, reaching for his hand.

House pulls away. He knows they're not ordinary people, they're doctors, destined to not believe in destiny. It's too late to change.

"He's going to die."

"House, I'm so sorry. I'll stay here until you finish the case. If you need anything–––"

Her voice trails off. She stands, wanting to touch him, to kiss him and hug him and be here for him, but with his back to her she knows he won't let her, so she just walks out.

-

"Your dad's left foot is itching. And he's jaundice. It's not cancer but I think it could be hepatorenal syndrome," Wilson says.

"Alport's causing the kidney failure and deafness. What's causing everything else?"

"Cirrhosis," Foreman says walking in. "AST, ALT and GGT were off the charts so I did a biopsy, the old man's–––"

"An alcoholic," Taub says, Thirteen following close behind and holding liquor bottles.

"No chance at a transplant."

"No chance at tomorrow. Liver's gone," Foreman finishes, brazenly objective, detached the way his boss has to pretend  
to be.

"I'll tell the patient," House says after a long beat, then limps away, choking his cane too tight and angry at the injustice of this introduction being a final, fatal farewell.

_**amor fati **_

Fate can be tempted, lured, provoked and ignored–––diverted, subverted, concealed and sealed. But it cannot be eluded. Imminent is every end that leaves every unanswered question an incurable casualty of kismet.

The 4th of July is two weeks passed, even the man's demise is patriotic, House thinks as he makes it to Alexander's room. The slow throb of his heart and nauseating emptiness of his stomach are making his whole history feel hollow. There's envy and sorrow in the ordinary sight of father and son together, Ben at Alexander's bedside.

"Dr. Stahr," he interrupts after clearing his throat, almost polite.

"Dr. House. Ben, why don't you go call Cynthia and the kids, they're probably worried. Let them know you're here."

"Sure, dad."

Ben's eyes meet House's, dark brown and glassed over. They're strangers still, as Ben walks out. They might always be.

"It's my liver," the old man admits more than asks, as soon as Ben is gone. House nods.

"How long?"

"Maybe a day."

Life is just a timetable, a calendar, a clock, a meaningless chronology quantifiable to the last breath, House realizes, seeing the sum of self- destruction and regret incarnate. He wishes Wilson were here, feeling like a child in this absurd scenario, in need of an ally, a buddy, the closest thing to a brother he's ever had and someone who gets thanked for delivering a death sentence.

"How have you been since your father's funeral?" Alexander asks, deflecting the diagnosis as he equates his own death with John's, feeling the mortal need to confess everything at once.

"Good," House surprises himself by saying.

"Got my boss pregnant," he divulges without considering, and in doing so admits its significance.

"Twins," he adds proud and under his breath.

"It's almost poetic, isn't it? The negation of death with new life."

Staring at 'Semper fi' in blue ink and ten ringless fingers on surgeon's hands, House sits in preparation for the paternal wisdom, the last words of the man responsible for his existence.

"I don't believe in God, Greg. Fate or faith either. I've relied on reason my entire life. I'm a pragmatist, an atheist, a liar, a doctor. And alone. It was my fear of change that led me here, obstinate objectivity and refusal to feel, to accept that maybe I made the wrong choice, maybe I'm not better off by myself. I was too afraid of losing the one thing I had to see what I could have had. Don't make the same mistake as me, son. It's all over too soon to never say the truth."

House stands slowly, knowing there's nothing he can say, affected by the honesty of the one patient he can't save.

"Greg," when House won't look at him.

"Tell my son...

I'm sorry."

House nods slowly, understanding, forgiving in a glance. Reunion isn't recompense for a fatherless lifetime, and this isn't closure. But it is the end, an answer, another piece of the puzzle. Difficult as it is to walk away, unresolved and impossible to process, he leaves the room, trying to forget about the life he could have had and glimpsing, dying to grasp the one he still could have.

Trapped in a rare moment when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny, House resigns reason to the concept of fate. A fatal prognosis implies fate's role, life as a straight line to ruin. Is it just semantics or is everybody powerless in a predetermined masterplan?

More personal, he broods about the possibilities. Was Alex his mother's one true love? What if Blythe and Alexander were meant to be together? What if they didn't elude their fate but resisted it, denied themselves a destiny, happiness, meaning?

Suddenly it ruptures, from the farthest recesses of his soul, an epiphany, his identity, the truth.

House is Alexander.

Alone, always–––an addict, cynical, contemptuous, fathering sons he may never know, in love with a woman he's accepted as unattainable, their backstory steeped in loss, guilt, abandonment, terrified of changing, of risking it all on the chance his heart is right when his mind refutes the idea of love and faith and forever.

Alexander Stahr dies quietly a few hours later, with his second son at his side.

Left to deal with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime, House takes two vicodin, and two more five minutes later, wanting the numbness, the detachment, wanting the pain to go away.

He knows that life's a match, a blinding spark that burns out fast. The immense and illimitable darkness is always approaching, extinguished in a breeze, a breath, over in the blink of an eye.

It is in this moment, this bleak and broken moment that House makes a decision, about family, about the future.

Finally he leaves his office, forcing indifference, feigning composure. He's halfway down the hall when the glass door closes quietly, the door that doesn't read Gregory Stahr, MD.

-

"I'm sorry," Cuddy says as he starts into her office.

The cool room is swimming in moonlight, making it picturesquely easy to ignore the oppressively humid summer midnight just outside the window. House stands frozen in front of the mahogany nostalgia of her desk, almost willing to let his long suppressed excitement for his sons show, to hide like the moonlit aesthetic, every airless emotion.

Resemblances aside, he knows this could be its own original blunder. The same mistakes are more than inherited, they're infectious, a pandemic impossible to eradicate. The axiom of the human condition is to lie, to fail, to perpetuate the meaninglessness.

Except without an exit, the only alternative is to be the exception. Can they accept, alter and love their fate? Commit, stay, raise meaning out of two mistakes?

The answers can't be deduced with logic or revealed through rationale and, silent for too long, House shrugs, trying to seem unaffected.

"You shouldn't be here," he reiterates. "Give me your keys, I'll drive you home."

Too tired to disagree, Cuddy stands to dig through her purse and hands him the keys. He starts out of the office, leaving her to follow.

"You're staying tonight?" She asks, as they start down the dim corridors of the closed clinic.

House stops and nods, letting her catch up. She's relieved that he's opting for love over loneliness for once, and that she won't be confined to bedrest by herself, bored and sick and scared when the symptoms get more severe.

But as he turns and they start walking again, relief turns to white, her steps stagger. She slows, stops, her palm weak and wet reaching for the wall.

"House," she cries, collapsing.

"Something's wrong."

His heart sinks, he's on his knees, his whole world in jeopardy–––another chance for family, the future, the fate of four.

-


	9. Forever

Notes: Last chapter. Sorry, sorry, sorry this took forever (puns, hah) to finish. Again, the medical stuff is thoroughly improvised, so please forgive any errs there. I'd really love to know if you read (or liked) this chapter and the story as a whole if you followed it. So please let me know what you think. I have a few ideas forming in the back of my mind so encouragement of any kind would be loved and appreciated.

Thanks for reading! Please review.

* * *

**IX. Forever**

Time is life's lie.

Minutes, days, weeks––the years drift and diminish, meandering toward the discovery of the purpose.

Comprised of moments, time distorts truth.

Moments that are measured, calculated and quantified, assigned a meaning in an otherwise ambiguous lapse.

This lapse is the lie, a temporal border between an event which is now present, was future and will be past, and the memory of the event. A lie founded on the assumption of the passage of time––linear, forward, away from now.

Life's lie because time doesn't pass.

It compiles.

The limit of this compilation leaves history and heirs, a beginning born from an end and hope, a blind faith in the figment of forever.

House is aware of this limit, this boundary, of all the time wasted. He can't reconcile eternity with evanescence, a paradox with a lie.

If forever exists then life's insignificant, every action and accomplishment meaningless in the scope of infinity. Without forever, fate is fugitive, contrived, and all that's earned, deserved and experienced in every countable calendar day of a lifetime––the pith of being–– petty.

Nothing endures.

A truth at the core of the human condition, irrefutable and insurmountable, he's always known. There's no comfort for him in the concept of the finite or the fiction of forever. His disbelief in his own eternal insignificance House demotes, addressing the dissonance that is present tense, uncertain where it's leading, only knowing that any moment all that he loves could be lost.

_**premature epiphany**_

A clock ticks and it's all he knows. The sum of wasted time he sees, eclipsing all the years in between.

"Cuddy collapsed," House says with his back to his team.

"Is she alright?"

"_No_. She's unconscious and in the ICU."

"Are the twins...?"

"Are they what? Looking into buying a condo? Still disagreeing over what shade to decorate the womb? She hasn't miscarried. _Yet_. If that's what you're asking."

He tosses her chart on the table and turns back around toward the blank whiteboard.

"Differential."

"Her obstetrician is in the Caribbean till next week," Taub reminds.

"That's neither a symptom or a diagnosis."

"Why are we––?"

"Pre eclampsia is most likely..." Thirteen interjects, cutting off Foreman before he can deflect.

"There's an increased risk for gestational diabetes in a multiple pregnancy because two placentas increase the resistance to insulin," adds Taub.

"Her OB would have caught diabetes."

"Twin-twin transfusion might..."

"They're dizygotic."

"Preterm or delayed interval delivery..."

"Placenta's intact."

"Hypoperfusion."

"Or the pregnancy's irrelevant."

"Are there any other symptoms?"

"Her chart says hypertension."

"So we're back to pre eclampsia..."

House picks her chart up. Staring, then cringing, the epiphany on the page.

"Hemolytic anemia, low platelets. It's not just pre eclampsia. It's Hellp Syndrome. "

House scoffs at the irony, the culprit a Beatles song in that perpetual battle against sage Jagger and his fellow philosophers. The soundtrack of his life can't be shuffled that easily.

"Run a full blood count, check her liver enzymes, renal function, electrolytes and proteinuria. Do a D-dimer to confirm."

"If it is Hellp, the only effective treatment is delivery," Thirteen says.

"But the intrauterine growth isn't the same for both twins. Her last ultrasound shows one fetus is at least three weeks more developed which means the other might not––" Taub tries.

"Start her magnesium sulfate and corticosteroids. And up her hydralazine," House interrupts. "I'm doing another ultrasound."

-

Pregnancy is perilous, the strife and sacrifice and struggle of new life to survive. Having ceded the strength of administrator for the helplessness of being a patient, Cuddy, unconscious and in intensive care, remains unaware.

Devastation festers beneath the stolid surface of the doctor responsible for diagnosing and curing three people who are all, through decades or trimesters, a part of him. He doesn't know how he ended up here. A convoluted conspiracy or one too many accidents, the inscrutable chronology that commenced on a tennis court twenty years ago seems an unlikely beginning from this imminent end.

House sits beside the ultrasound monitor, ghosting his hand down her arm as he does. With haunting clarity, the scene fuels his residual nostalgia. Months ago when he reached for the ultrasound wand and heard an ominous echo, fourteen years ago when she was in this position, _his _attending, wavering between the options that would leave him scarred and alive, damaged but still a doctor.

The colorless image is the same as before. One baby is prepared for the world outside the womb and the other isn't. If this were any other patient, he'd have a C-section started before the tests got back from the lab. But if he delivers and one doesn't make it, he's only succeeded in killing another part of himself.

In stillness he chokes down his last few vicodin with a tearless sob and realizes he needs a revelation, or at least a second opinion.

-

"Hellp Syndrome," House says, closing the door to Wilson's office behind him.

"There's a reason doctors don't treat loved ones."

"Says the oncologist who's slept with...how many patients?"

"But I never impregnated any of them," Wilson retorts , only half in jest.

"She's not a loved one. She's not a relative. She's _not_ my wife. She's my boss."

With an omitted 'just' before 'my boss,' both sense the uncertainty, even in the truth.

"Don't do this. Call her OBGYN."

"There is no ethical dilemma here. It's personal. It's whether or not I can remain objective and diagnose her, them, or not. And I did."

"It's also whether or not you can cure them. There are three lives here, House."

"I'm her attending, it's my decision."

"One that you can't possibly make objectively, you're invested in their lives. You conceived two of them––"

House's pager interrupts, the shrillness making his heart sink. He rushes out.

-

Through the glass door he sees Cuddy seizing, her vitals plummet. The decision's made.

"Prep an OR," he says to his team. "We're delivering."

-

Pale and panicking, House scrubs in. He doesn't know if he's made the right decision or how this all will end, only that he has to be there when it does.

Cuddy's blood pressure has stabilized. Draped and anesthetized, she lies almost unrecognizable on the operating table. The surgical light is hard, casting skewed shadows on the green tile of the OR walls. House, half incognito in a surgical cap and mask, reaches for the scalpel the same time as the surgeon, colliding knuckles.

"House, what are you doing here?" Asks Chase, the anxiety of cutting open his boss making his voice falter. House relinquishes his grip, almost paralyzed by the catastrophic scenarios of what could happen in the next few minutes that are filling his mind.

"My patient," he tries calm, not caring that his presence confirms paternity.

"You shouldn't be here," Chase reiterates weakly, shifting his focus to the transverse incision he's about to make.

A crimson curve, the first cut. The sight of her blood floods House with an irrational guilt. This is his fault for not seeing the symptoms sooner. He was so distracted with the temporary return of his own father that he'd forgotten he was due to become one himself. He can't blink, watching each descending peak on the EKG and standing a useless spectator. Then a glimmer of optimism redoubles his panic––if, if he's made the right decision then this is it. Here, now and for the rest of his life, Greg House is going to be accountable for more than solving puzzles.

Fingers, he sees fingers first. Tiny fingers bending, reaching out of the amniotic warmth and into cold sterile reality. House grapples for a clamp and is quick to cut the cord of his first born. A chin quivers then a whimper becomes weeping, he's alive, kicking, crying and breathing.

The momentary relief and elation fade fast and House holds his breath, arms outstretched, waiting an agonizing minute for the other twin to be born. And he is, small, limp, lifeless as a ragdoll. Blue. They clear his airway and House carries him to a warmer, drying him and slapping each foot, desperately clinging to a future with the three of them he can only now admit he wants more than anything.

"Cry. C'mon cry," he begs as his entire life dissolves into a single second, waiting for that first wail. A patient heartbeat later he hears it. A voice, a life, the second half of a fragile fraternity saved. When the premature prodigy opens his eyes, the first face he sees is his father's.

The indescribable thrill of that first breath has House trembling. Not quite cradling the miracle, he exhales. His neck cranes to see Cuddy, still stable and being sutured.

A nurse reaches for the newborn but he can't let go. The panic of minutes before is pride now. Curiosity the first impression, a mutual fascination with a familiar face, his thumb brushes over the crown of his son's head and House sees it.

A birthmark.

He beams, making sense of the full circle.

After a minute, Chase pries the boy out of his arms and gets his Apgar scores. House returns to Cuddy's bedside, wishing she were conscious so that he could kiss her or propose, have some outlet for the wave of emotion that's just washed over him and ask while he's still hopeful, what happens next.

-

Hours later he's still brooding at her bedside, his feeling starting to normalize, he persuades himself it's more boredom than vigilance.

"House," she strains, glancing what she hopes is his shadow beside her.

"What happened? Are the twins...?" She asks immediately, too groggy yet to see that he's left.

"You are one lucky mother," she hears him say a minute later, wheeling the newborn brothers in.

She reaches for her first born, tears filling her eyes when she sees he has House's. House is holding the other twin, squirming and threatening to shriek. He strokes the bridge of his nose to calm him and it works. The baby boy with two parents and no name closes his eyes. Cuddy looks on surprised as much as relieved to see House's first feat of fatherhood.

"What was wrong?" She asks, taking her second son.

"Hellp Syndrome," House answers, shining a flashlight to see the pupils in her tear filled eyes are round and reactive.

"Richardson had me on antihypertensives."

"I'm sorry," he laments with a suddenly depressed sincerity. "I should have seen it sooner."

"House, you made the right decision. I'm alive, the twins are alive because of you.  
Thank you," she yawns.

A nurse comes in to check Cuddy's stitches and take the babies back to the nursery and NICU. Reminded that visiting hours are over and new mommy needs her rest, he feels undoubtedly like he doesn't belong. He clasps her hand and leaves her alone, tempering doubt with distance.

_** aside: brotherhood**_

Footsteps echo and sneakers scuff the recently waxed floor of the deserted cafeteria. House wanders the halls restless until his soles lead him to NICU where he watches premies on ventilators, knowing the unwritten tomorrow is still opaque. He formulates a question, the question he has to ask, that he's always had to ask her. But somebody is standing beside him. House turns his head first to see it's no stranger, but a sibling.

"You're still here? The morgue should have given you your dad's paperwork by now."

"Is it true?" Ben asks.

"Probably not," House says sardonically to himself. Everybody lies, and right now it's all he knows.

"What?" He asks curious after a moment.

"The Dean of Medicine, your fiancé, she's in the ICU?"

"She's not my–– It's true."

"Who's running this place?"

House shakes his head slow, the motion seguing into a synchronous shift in regrets. They hover quiet, the same weight on both their shoulders.

"I'm sorry," House starts, abruptly apologetic. "About your father."

"It's not your fault," Ben reassures. Then,

"The kids will miss him...war stories," he sighs. "I'll miss him."

Ben's stoicism is starting to fade. There's a confession caught in his throat that he can't confide. A long silence stands between them.

"What's your handicap?" Ben asks, the double entendre almost warranting a sarcastic swing of House's cane.

Instead he cocks his head at the change of subject. They talk golf another ten minutes and say they'll keep in touch. Watching a new friend walk away, House doesn't know if he'll ever tell him that they're more.

Looking back through the window, there's something more than parental paranoia keeping him here. His leg hurts and he needs to shower, to sleep but all he can do is sink. Sink in the acceptance at the bottom of the shock, sink until he sees it, the meaning as his reflection in the glass.

It takes so little, so infinitely little to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning––love, convictions, connections, history. Life, finite and imperfect, with all its danger and redemption, takes place in immediate proximity to this border, even directly on it. Lies and loss are never miles away but a fraction of an inch.

House knows he's supposed to feel different, to have changed; seen how close he came to losing everything and had some sort of cathartic question answered.

But, blue eyes and broken heart, an identical identity is what he's facing.

He's always known that he could, that he would lose her.

The pathetic pessimist, the miserable nihilist, the cynic who doesn't believe in forever, if this is the only person he can be, he can't be with her.

Or them.

Torn between two fathers he never had, between vacancy and destruction his decision depends on her answer.

He can't become John, present but resenting it, whose priority was punctuality and whose paternity was only superficial.

But the scar on his leg isn't a war wound and House is no hero either. Alexander was just a stranger, a friend of the family, a missing piece of the puzzle that House has inherited, an incomplete picture he doesn't want to pass on.

_**(parent)thetical**_ _**contractions**_

The dim gloom of a father lost fades as a new father finds himself. In her room, out of his depth, out of his jurisdiction, the longing to be more than a liability almost bothers him.

House punches both hands into his pockets, half-hoping to discover a ring, a token of intent, something to make this right before it's too late. But with infinity out of reach, he sits a willing saboteur.

"What would you have said?" He asks, hesitant. "If I'd asked you to marry me?"

"No," she answers quickly.

"House, as frustrating and dysfunctional as what we have is, it works. Ceremoniously slaughtering it and moving to the suburbs isn't something I ever see us doing."

A beat. With his head bowed and eyes hidden, she can't see his hurt confusion transmute into melancholy cognition. A victim of the cruelest self-deception, House's face pales as the denial's shed. There are no more compromises, this was all or nothing, her or––

Nothing.

"Call a lawyer," he finally mutters quietly, biting his tongue before he can add that he's sure she still has the family law attorney on speed dial from the foster care failure.

"Are we getting sued?"

"You'll get sole custody. And you already sign my paychecks so child support isn't an issue. Take what you want and give me the TPR to sign so you can go on being the single mother you've spent the last four years aspiring to be."

The acronym is the most offensive. Termination of parental rights. (Implying in contractual parentheses that he doesn't want the responsibility) when in reality he just doesn't want to ruin it. He can never be what she needs, he doesn't even know who he is, who he's supposed to be.

If he stays he'll only get in the way. Mumbling something about the misfits, the manipulative bastard's bastard children, he insists with a harsher honesty than his last words that they're better off without him.

Then he makes the mistake of looking her in the eyes.

Stunned over his assumption of exclusion,"Okay" is all Cuddy can say. She's chewing on ice chips, her hair tangled with a few gray highlights the only side effect of the span of time standing between them. No marriage license, no vows or papers or files, they're closer than ever with no formal commitment. More than anything, he wants to lean forward and kiss her but he just blinks and stands.

His limp's reluctant as he turns and goes.

"House," she starts like it's a question. Like this isn't him, it can't be.

He turns back, looking more wounded than her.

"Nevermind," she sighs, sinking back and alone again.

As he leaves them behind, House forces his heart to accept that he'll never teach his sons to shave, to play lacrosse or piano. He won't be leaning on his cane and videotaping their first steps or wake up early to sneak candybars in with their school lunches.

He won't be there.

This is the limit to their love. He's gotten too close, too close to losing it all again. Instead of having it stolen, he's surrendering the dream, the hope, the expectation of every being anything more.

Damaged doctor, never a dad.

-

The paperwork for the TPR is on his desk a few days later. At first he ignores it, tossing the folder aside and letting it get buried under the pirana and the tennis ball, July's issue of Penthouse.

But the obstinate document keeps resurfacing until he finally throws it away, negating again the catalyst of his own emotional bankruptcy.

Following a week in recovery rather than in her office, Cuddy takes her first born home while the premature twin stays another week on a ventilator in NICU. Perpetuating his own insomnia, House drives back to the hospital in the middle of every night that week and gazes through the glass, compelled curious as much as concerned. The unresolved sense of responsibility rises but again he convinces himself he would only mar their promise of a perfect family.

-

Fallout from fraternity means anarchy for Cuddy and fairways and greens for House. As a distraction he golfs with Ben, successfully dodging clinic duty since there's no Cuddy around to hunt him down on the ninth hole. He hasn't held a driver since the infarction, part shellshock, part superstition and now he's discovering how much he missed the scorching late summer sun reflecting off sandtraps and silver wedges.

Cuddy spends maternity leave a mother. Breastfeeding her boys to the point of depletion, doing yoga on the rare occasion that they nap simultaneously, she strives for a balance, losing weight as she waits for House's signature. Her sister stays the first two weeks and once her stitches are removed Cuddy hires a nanny, though she's hoping she won't need one until she returns to work.

After there's no reason to stand awake in front of a window, looking at a life that can't recognize him, that might never, House tries to appreciate having the whole bed to himself. But against all rationalization, he misses the pins and needles of a pregnant woman asleep on his arm. One morning he wakes early from a nearly sleepless night, lying lazy half an hour before discovering a strand of Cuddy's hair on the pillow beside him. Wrapping it around a finger, he closes his eyes and remembers her in nothing but his Hopkins shirt, smiling when he sees the red and yellow of a Zagnut wrapper at the top of his trashcan on the other side of the room. Always, there will be something to remind him. Then the twinge of that tourniquet tied tight around his heart when he imagines them married, knowing now that it could never happen.

Once, out of self-pity, he considers calling for a hooker. But when he realizes it's been so long that he can't remember the escort service's number, he resigns to his self-inflicted suffering and takes a shower, where he closes his eyes and tries to forget, but can only come to the memory, to the thought of the Lisa Cuddy he lost, because of his selfishness, his fear, all over again.

House did what he swore he'd never do, he got used to loving her. And to being loved. The luxury of intimacy, their history and a happiness, however incomplete, he became dependent on, only to be left emptier than ever in the aftermath.

At work it's not the same without her, though he feigns reverie in the freedom. Sickeningly sentimental between easy diagnoses, several times he scribbles a note on his prescription pad, reminiscent of the one she left hidden in his labcoat too many years before. He would give it to her secretary to give to her. He would leave it in her mailbox, tape it to her screendoor. Except he always throws it away, every crumbled piece of paper a love letter as much as an apology.

_**wrecking ball**_

"Do you still have that pair of cleats in your office? Ben's country club isn't going to let me wear these on the golf course again," House says, staring down at his sneakers.

Wilson tilts his head in the direction of the cleats.

"Conrad and Alexander," Wilson says, initiating his intervention.

"You named your shoes?"

"The names of your children. Thought you might want to know."

"You were expecting Greg2 and Greg3?" Asks House, picking up the golf cleats.

"She never calls you Greg. I'm not sure she ever did.

It wouldn't mean anything. This does."

With all his ironically righteous wisdom, House knows his conscience incarnate is right. Momentarily speechless and staring at the "_Ordinary People"_ poster, he decides Alexander looked more like Donald Sutherland than Sean Connery and wonders if Danny was really the strong swimmer.

"They look like you," continues Wilson, his brown eyes stoking the guilt House is still trying to conceal.

"Cuddy have you babysitting already?"

"No. I was invited to their Bris. She wanted to invite you. It was small, just family and a few friends. I got her a pair of antique picture frames, for their first family portraits..."

"Which I'm sure will shatter as soon as either of them can walk, or _throw_––"

"Everything breaks, House," he interrupts exasperated.

"Everything falls apart. But that's not a good enough reason to never build something to begin with."

"I'm a wrecking ball with relationships."

"But you've changed, or none of this would ever have happened. Cuddy didn't just get pregnant _accidently_."

House winces, caught.

"You're afraid but you want this. You just can't quantify what you're feeling, there's no science to the future. It's not a decision you're meant to make objectively, House––to be with her––care about somebody more than yourself. It scares you because you've been there and you know there's a chance you could hurt her, and get hurt.

But there's also a chance it could work."

"Thanks for the shoes," he quips, determined to undermine the poignancy of his friend's insight as the door slams on his way out.

-

At the end of the week Cameron brings him a case. Friday's the differential.

Saturday morning he has an excuse to see Cuddy.

At nine he slides off his bike, slippery, limping down the dim path to her door. The early sun's missing from the storm swept sky and the dreary drizzle is a cold stream when he passes under a gap in her gutters.

Wet and wide awake, he doesn't know yet what he'll say. So he just knocks and waits.

A metaphor comes to him, watching the September rain. The somber trickle flooding the streets he likens to a leaky faucet, and extends it to them. The slow submergence of his chance––for meaning, for marriage, for more than this.

The swift water is lashing under his feet and it's all his fault.

As the metaphor melds into the moment, Cuddy opens the door a different administrator, a subtle smile shining when she sees him, not quite washing over her wide-eyed exhaustion.

"Need a consult," he murmurs concisely.

Leaving the door open, she starts in the direction of a whistling kettle and he follows. The living room is warm, cozy even, with the scent of cinnamon and citrus wafting in from the kitchen, making House very aware that he's standing in a home. We should move in together, he thinks but can't say, knowing she would interpret it as sarcastic, a whim at best, and never the serious proposition he's yearning to shout.

"I was just about to eat breakfast," Cuddy says, drying her hands at the kitchen counter.

"There's enough, if you're hungry."

House shakes his head, afraid of what he politeness is masking. If she were wearing an apron or had just had her nails done, he'd have to interject with an insult, but she's not and he doesn't. As inconceivable as it is, the scene feels natural, it feels perfect.

"You look good," he admits under his breath, stating the obvious and not really surprised to see her getting along so well without him.

"Is this thyroid storm?" he asks quick to cover up the compliment and leaning closer to hand her the patient file.

Inside the radius of her perfume, he's submerged again. Sensory relief, that instantaneous flood of the familiar. It's there, under the smell of baby lotion, cinnamon and sweat––she hasn't showered yet and it's been too long, all he can think of is kissing her.

All he can do is listen. She explains why she doesn't think the underlying problem with the patient is endocrinological and he hears her voice but not the words, watching her lips, not knowing if they'll align with his again.

Taking one last sip of her tea as she finishes her speech, Cuddy walks away and House assumes it's to change a dirty diaper or that her maternal radar senses a fussy infant. Except without her to concentrate on, he notices the baby monitor on the table and sees both twins asleep in the crib.

He squints, inching in and testing himself. He can tell them apart; even on a small, dim, pixelated screen. He says they're names out loud, a wry wistful smirk making him slur.

They do look like him.

"I have a copy of the paperwork if you want to sign it now," Cuddy interrupts on her return, the paperclipped pile of legality landing beside the monitor on the table.

A beat.

"I can't," he swallows, afraid to call her bluff. "Have to solve this case by tee time."

Later that night he comes back in the hope that he'll wake her, that through anger they might make an amends. From the time his kickstand hits the curb, he starts to lose his nerve. He doesn't want to sign away his rights, even if every burdensome responsibility goes with them. But he doesn't want to stay if it only means sabotaging their happiness.

So he stands, staring through her window, waiting for summer to end. She's not asleep yet, but pacing between the nursery and her study, warming bottles and working, no doubt, trying to fix whatever her temporary replacement has broken.

Not worried in the least about how she's going to do this on her own, not wondering the way she did months before why he needs to negate everything, just leaving him to reconsider and to regret that he's always on the outside.

-

Negations and negotiations, for House every day of the last nine months (and the last twenty years) has been a rung on the ladder into Lisa Cuddy's life. Never has he let his happiness be contingent on another person. But without her he's miserable, aware only of their thwarted potential, the difference between what he wants and what he deserves.

The moment his far hopes became a clear vision, a blurred ultrasound and unexpected echo, his priorities and purpose were redefined. And he knows the kids will be left handed and circumcised with her ceaseless ambition and viridian eyes, bearing no semblance to their sad acerbic diagnostician dad. He can't hear Cuddy ever saying 'You're just like your father,' only Wilson reminding him how they've grown up and how he missed out.

The single great love on which she staked everything, he cautiously forfeited. All other affairs seem insignificant now, if not regrettable. Her one night stands and perfunctory personal ads and the nameless knock at his door in the middle of the night. Even Stacy seems a vague mistake.

Never romance, they sought asylum, finding their place together in the chaos and completion in professional proximity. Now it's not enough.

Nights like this he wants to leave, to run away with her. Elope to Atlantic City, not giving her a chance to say no, waking Wilson the witness in the middle night and never thinking twice.

Rising with a sort of energetic despair, he picks up the keys to his bike, forgets his cane but can never open the door.

He can't even pick up the phone.

So he drops the keys and collapses in his own self loathing on the couch. The sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach churns. She's gone, definitely, finally gone. Half unconsciously he's cherished the possibility that he'd be brave enough to admit the blunder, whisper that he was wrong and try for forgiveness. It's too late now, it was curiosity not courage that drove him to her door twice today. But he couldn't say he was wrong. He couldn't bring himself to take the papers and tear them apart when it was all he went over there to do.

It hurts, his cowardice. His thigh. His ineradicable want for her.

Like nothing he's ever felt before, House knows he 's not the same.

Maybe he has changed, the way centuries of rain and wind reshape rock. Their history as geology: the decomposition of his cynicism, drenched in the acid rain of doubt, leaving a disfigured cliff ; weathered by time and a scarred atmosphere, whose only remaining beauty is the moss she left behind.

Sedimentary, their relationship, he decides as he drifts into a silent sleep.

_**borderline**_

The dream is always the same.

He's running.

Running the way he did, crestfallen and crushed, toward the Oceanside dusk when his first love was lost. Running like he did counting off laps for lacrosse. Running like he did the summer after he got shot.

He's whole, he's healthy, he's happy.

And she's with him, the way she's always been.

The woman who has risked her job, saved his life, sacrificed and stayed unconditionally. The one who administered the ketamine, coped with narcotics addiction, loved him through the pain, loved him when he couldn't love anyone.

His friend, his lover, his lifeline.

Reaching back for her as he runs away, he's always reaching, even after the hopeless race has been lost, forfeited, forgotten.

The dream tears at him, scraping along his mind like a dull knife, lacerating the truth: she'll always be his finish line, his constant, the fixed focal point of his fate.

House may never be whole, never be who she wants but she'll always be with him, waiting; her devotion his dependence. The only one who's ever trusted, believed, understood him––she'll always love him.

Then it strikes him, an epiphany that refocuses his perception.

There's no always without forever.

The weight of irreversibility is lifted. For his entire life House has believed this is it, that the deeds and consequences of here and now are all there are. Because there's no proof otherwise. Except always. To believe in always is to contradict the finite, to grasp and hold the fleeting, to want what's meaningful to endure. Love hinges on the existence of always, the myth of forever.

And for the first time, neither awake nor aware, House wants to believe.

-

Morning comes illuminated. The golden hues of sunrise warm the room, and in a glimpse the glimmer 's caught that vanished months ago in a mess of fading lines. House rubs his eyes, sprawled and stretching as fragments of the fantasy replay in the back of his gradually awakening mind. Reality sustains the integrity of the dream, for an instant he's painless, an ignorant runner, soon deceived into standing without the cane.

The corner of his night stand breaks his fall, sliding against then driving into the scarred indent of his right leg. Rather than rise an irascible fool, he inhales and throws on his plaid robe. The pitiful remorse of the last weeks has peeled away, despite the reality and the pain. A new layer's exposed and, glaring at the vicodin bottle before brushing his teeth, he decides to take less.

The barrier, that polarity between withdrawal and demand, want and need, has been broken; obliterated by the same wrecking ball that erected it from relationships' rubble. You can't always get what you want, he tells the man slanting in the mirror, but he's finally ready to try.

The day passes and he plots.

It has to be an act of dramatic honesty.

He thinks of taking a lighter and burning the TPR, the whole damn alphabet if it would mean anything. Except he knows it would only succeed in setting off her smoke alarms.

He wants to go back, to experience it all over again, as a father and not a doctor, to say three words instead of forcing three letters.

Leaving the office early, he wanders the aisles of the giftshop in search of that requisite tangible token. No candy, no flowers, no cards say what he's feeling.

No words do either.

Back at his apartment, the roses start to wither and the candy melts while he showers. Getting out, he meets himself under the fluorescent light of scrutiny and upon closer inspection, decides the reflection needs one more minor adjustment.

The razor's dusty in the back of the medicine cabinet. He blows it off and glides a new blade in, reaching in the bag, behind the Wilson-guilt brand chocolates for the shaving cream.

House wants the change to be apparent, visible; he wants to make it real. And he does, before walking out without wavering, without rationalizing, without any idea what happens next.

By the time he takes the key out of the ignition, it's late dusk. An almost-autumn chill slows his step and charcoal clouds hang in the dark gray sky. The distant roll of thunder portentously precedes a sudden downpour.

He ascends her steps and stands insecure at her door, watching the dust of restless moth's wings float into the incandescent falloff of the porchlight as they try to escape the rain. The wind's indecision drifts the dustcloud in the other direction with a gust.

He knocks with no expectations.

While he waits, he wonders if their destiny is this repetition of resisting and returning to each other, if forever exists in the context of such fidelity.

A puddle glares in his periphery, the moon pale, almost transparent, peaking out from behind the clouds and refracting off the water. The impact of the falling rain, the ripple of perfect circles, looks like diamond rings, spinning dizzily, mockingly on the sidewalk.

"House."

The door's open and Cuddy looks surprised to see him. Unexpected and uninvited, House feels as desperate as the dying moths, trying to get some place dry and warm.

When he doesn't say anything, she turns and starts away, leaving the door open.

In from the rain, he's no more articulate. Cuddy's standing by the couch, clean laundry piled on the cushions waiting to be folded.

"Was it the patient's thyroid?" She asks when his silence starts to unnerve her.

"Patient's fine," he breathes after a long pause. "How are you?"

A tender, almost trembling concern surfaces with the question. So he clarifies crudely.

"Are _these_ twins enjoying double the dairy business?" Talking to her chest.

"I'm tired," she sighs.

"And the parasites, now that they're outside of the host?"

"They're asleep," she says turning her head toward the nursery as if to make sure then bending and picking up a few more clothes to fold. That domestic instant House notices a white smudge on her cheek. Baby powder, and she's more beautiful than ever. He trips forward, graceless and wipes it away with his thumb.

Her palm rises to his clean shaven cheek. House closes his eyes, the transitory touch a promise kept, a chance recaptured. He knows they've come to a cusp.

"I guess you're here for the paperwork," Cuddy whispers, pulling back.

"Still need your signature."

The hope she's always had has been stolen from her voice. House knows he's disappointed her. He knows it's the last time. Like an imbecile he nods.

As soon as Cuddy leaves the room he limps to the foyer. She comes back dejected, the threat of tears glassing over the sapphire strength of her eyes. They're standing in the same hallway this all started in, with loss, with forgiveness––with a kiss.

Her hand brushes across the wet leather of his jacket as she hands him the papers. Harbinger thunder rumbles, a startled branch raps against the window.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" Cuddy asks before he can.

"No."

"What _do_ you want, House?"

It crashes, a blinding strike outside the window, an instant of light that wipes the slate clean. She never takes her eyes from his. A deafening silence after the lightening, the sound of the rain falling, then:

"I want to kiss you."

Caught off guard Cuddy tilts her head, watching the water run down his temple. Her eyes stop at the worried wrinkle in his brow and she wonders when did he grow up and when did they grow old.

Shallow breaths fill the space between their bodies. Rising, tentative on the tips of her toes, she sways closer and his lips dip, slow and gentle to meet hers. They stay that way, connected with closed eyes finding what they never thought infinite and the faint taste of days gone by.

When she breaks the kiss, it's only to look at him, to make sure the shaven stance bearing his soul is the same man as the day before. Then his hand's pressed against the small of her back, pulling her to him with the overwhelming immediacy of every wasted moment. The feel of his skin without stubble is a lingering consolation. Her fingers comb through his hair, curling around the back of his neck and he deepens the embrace, both arms tightening around her, the plunge of his tongue precise as his bare jaw widens.

As their mouths melt into each other, the memories merge. Both know there's nothing more than this. The last line's crossed, a border breached.

Their lips part.

Breathless, he sees her–– laundry, bibs and bras, her briefcase and the unlit nursery in the background.

This is what's on the other side.

Her eyes are azure, not jade or viridian, like their sorrowful first kiss since commencement. Her expression's sanguine, not broken.

She's home, she's happy. She's everything.

And he's here.

An end, the beginning and they're together.

House holds her close another minute, a hug like a homecoming. He holds her until they hear a baby start to cry.

"You don't have to stay," she says, separating.

"I know."

Cuddy starts toward the nursery, then has to ask when she can't interpret  
his intention.

"Will you still be here when I come back?"

He nods, watches her walk away. Then low and like the last thing he'll ever say,  
the word means forever.

"Always."


End file.
